Masterchef The Professionals UK.

As Autumn turns to Winter and the days turn into nights about three o’clock in the fucking afternoon. So too does Masterchef the Professionals appear upon the screen like the seasonal spectre of Can’t-be-Arsed-Pour-Me-a-Drink TV.

You don’t intend to watch Masterchef, you end up marooned on it. Sure you can flick about on Netflix, or up and down the listings searching for something to watch while your horsemeat lasagna congeals on it’s little plastic tray. But you know you’ll settle for Masterchef just because it’s so easy! Perfect F.A.P fodder – Formulaic And Predictable. A televisual big old bowl o’ brown that slides down nice n’ easy.

For the minority of you who aren’t familiar with the format, it is basically of one of those food porn Marks & Spencers Xmas adverts masquerading as a competition. Whilst being as intellectually stimulating as a nuke-able Rustlers Cheeseburger bought from the reduced item shelf in the local Co-op.

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It’s precisely this digestibility that makes it sort of semi-socially required viewing. The sort of show you can have a conversion with your Daily Mail reading Auntie about, before she goes off on a rant about the ‘greens and migrants’ again. There are three allegedly distinguishable variants of the show;

• Regular, for the ‘foody’ amateurs who always take themselves waay too seriously.
• Celebrity, which is comprised of AS SEEN ON TV clients of publicists, who once interned under Elizabeth Murdoch, daughter of Rupert and tyrant of Star TV which produces the show.
• And finally there is Professional. Which is made up of purportedly professional chefs.

Anyways, this year we have same old buttery biscuit bollock brained Gregg Wallace. Michelin starred Marcus Wareing now looks like a knock off mascot lion from a sports tournament. As for Monica Galetti (rhymes with Alphabetti Spaghetti) she has bleached her hair yet again and could probably be either the baddie or the love interest opposite Christopher Lambert in a straight to DVD film.

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Obviously serious Masterchef watchers like yourstruly don’t give a fuck about the finals or semi-finals. Nope. The early stages are where the good stuff is at, because that’s where you get the fuck ups getting chucked out early on a bed of their own toasted hubris! Pop-Up pricks who chuck shit at a wall before picking out the corn and serving it to you on mint smeared grease paper at £10 a pop. The delusional cafe/bistro hacks who slap dark chocolate in everything from duck to lamb to porpoise. And the ladder climbing ‘Executive Chefs’ who haven’t confit’d a spud since John Major was in power but they’re on the show “with something to prove!”

This season’s first episode has one in the latter category. The unfortunate Kuljit who not only buggered up the always tricky skills test with his deconstructed devilled mackerel. But also shit the bed big style in the ‘Cook Us Your Best Meal’ challenge by serving up fish and potato flavoured variations of the colour puce on a platter of despair.

Anyway, every show is basically the same flavour. It gets kind of ridiculous week after week after week. But hey, if your life is going to shit it can be a welcome distraction and at the moment, who isn’t feeling the cutting edge of precipitous future? What I’m trying to say is I don’t begrudge people for watching and enjoying it.

What I do like to rip on are those deluded tuckfards that appreciate Masterchef. And like the show they fall into three distinct categories:

Dinner Party Despots. Love Islanders and Kitchen Confidential Coke Fiends. The second one proliferates all over the media landscape like Warhammer 40k orcs with tans and teeth whitening. They don’t require much explanation being your standard substandard schlebrity.

The Kitchen Confidential Coke Fiends I have first hand experience of. It happens like this: They take over a neat little neighbourhood cafe and turn it into a Fayne Dayning establishment with their mysterious financiers. Maybe they come to you for a bit of planning advice or a neighbourly chat about taking in their deliveries while they sleep off their hangover.

Almost like your new bestie in fact! So long as you are willing to front them two hundred quid for half a grilled lobster and chips. Failing that crucial first friendship test however now means they’ll probably dump goose grease down your drain and set fire to it.

If you really want to get under their skin mix up ‘celebrity chef’ over ‘professional’ and watch their eye twitch. Don’t worry though! Within six months they’re have legged it overnight leaving hundreds of thousands in debt and a wicked rodent infestation with a serious drug problem. Less Rasta mouse more meth mouse if you catch my drift.

Everyone knows a dinner party despot though! They stand over you in your own kitchen like some kind of poundland Gordon Ramsey and tell you how inferior your buttered toast is compared to theirs:

“Oooh don’t you want to warm the butter in a pan with a bit of harissa and muscovego? It’s so much more satisfying to spread that way. Mighty White? Oh please no! I only do sourdoughs with the yeast collected from a Cistercian nunnery where they have a 200 year old strain of candida running rampant..”

They are the same brand of petty snobs who try far too hard to ‘win’ on ‘Come Dine With Me’. I don’t mean the ones who are in it for a laugh and share the prize money. No I’m talking about those fusspots who insist they have food allergies to rare steak and make ice cream out of imaginary herbs their local ‘natural’ food shop grinds between selling packets of SPICE or K2. The majority of whom are narcissistic negging attention seeking wankers.

Not me though. Perish the thought.

Are you sure that oil is hot enough yet?