We noticed you from across the bar and liked your vibe.

Mum said it’s my turn in the MasterChef Murder Tunnel.

Consider this something of an experiment. I would love to do the full series if there’s enough interest in it and if people don’t mind me doing it? I’m not going to shotgun fire them out like I’m playing Wolfenstein 3D, I’ll work out a publishing schedule – at the moment I’m thinking every Monday and Friday starting next week (ignore the fact it’s Tuesday this week.) That feels manageable, especially as I can write quite a few of them in advance. I will always prioritise current series and the schedule may be rejigged throughout the year so as not to clutter your inboxes more than I already do.
They will also be much shorter recaps because the episodes are only half an hour filled with 3 challenges – the Professional Kitchen Challenge is literally 4 minutes and I’ve never felt more alive.

If you’re wondering where the episodes are, they’re on Prime. This does mean there’s always the ever looming threat that they’ll disappear from their online catalogue at a moment’s notice, scuppering my plans completely but we’ll cross that bridge if it comes.

The Road to Hell is Paved With Good Inventions

First and foremost, the biggest issue with this series, other than the rampant mid-noughties misogyny THAT WE WILL GET TO, MR. TORODE and quite how much fingering was going on

is the fact the show appears to be filmed in a local community centre with so many glass emergency doors that John and Gregg always look like the Mr. Burns alien

and if you’ve been to so much as one sunday school lesson, you know this room has the world’s worst acoustics. Which is bad enough when you’ve got an overly enthusiastic man sitting backwards on a chair strumming This Little Light of Mine at you, it is borderline torture with 6 adults constantly peaking the mics as their shoes squeak across the floorboards. All except Charlotte that is, who gets a whole plotline about wearing high heels and sounding like a dressage pony doing a cha-cha-cha because of it

this, somehow, isn’t the issue John takes with her – Gregg said barely anything about her, they just kept using extreme close-ups of him for *some reason*

instead John got VERY ANGRY because Charlotte had dared to make him a bonus crepe as she had a few extra minutes left after cooking her Pile of Cod, Capers and Potatoes to set herself apart from the other contestants who had all made Piles of Cod, Capers and Potatoes

and you realise that John was very much intended to be Simon Cowell when his biggest critique of Charlotte is that she’s a bit annoying (it gets worse, don’t worry)

So… it did annoy you?

I probably should’ve realised the Simon Cowell thing sooner given he’d backcombed his chest hair for maximum performative masculinity

I do remember having a crush on this man. I WAS THIRTEEN AND INCREDIBLY CLOSETED, IT WAS DIFFERENT TIMES, MAN, DIFFERENT TIMES! So this is not intended to be a callout post because I do think the show has done A LOT in the last few years to be mindful of sexism and racism is the culinary scene and I think seeing how far John, Gregg and the show have come in this regard is quite reassuring.

But at least John and Gregg could remember Charlotte’s name and have a discussion about her, Gregg kept having to have the PAs feed him lines to say about Sarah

to be fair, there was only so much they could say about everyone given EVERYONE just made pan-fried cod with boiled potatoes, the only distinguishing feature between everyone being their subpar sauces, or in the case of MasterChef’s own Ann Veal, not doing a sauce at all

Sarah had at least breadcrumbed the fish for flare, but so had Xanthe who was much more interesting because she looked vaguely like Nigella if you squint a bit and have the sun glaring in from behind her at all times

this fed into her lofty ambitions of wanting to be a TV chef which John got mortally offended by because you have to earn that title and India Fischer would proceed to call her “Celebrity chaser, Xanthe” for the rest of the episode

I kind of understand where he’s coming from BUT he never had this conversation with Adam who was literally introduced as wanting to be the next Jamie Oliver

Adam did however have himself completely stripped of an identity by the end of the round only being referred to as “Fish Flipper No.2” which sounds like a slur when India Fischer says it

he didn’t even get to be Fish Flipper No.1, that spot was reserved for Simon who, alongside Adam, who were being mocked for being so silly as to flip their fish while cooking it

Whose unappetising dish was whose? It doesn’t matter, they were the same thing except Adam’s wasn’t cooked all the way through.

Lastly we have Andy, sweet baby angel Andy, he started this whole thing so full of life and promise! (except when John and Gregg weren’t asking him why he was so old (HE WAS 40!))

and then completely died inside the moment John told him that lime only works with fish if you’re on a Maui honeymoon

and he couldn’t even go lie down on the MasterChef Therapy Couch because that’s where John and Gregg sit while they have a bitchfest disguised as a deliberation and Xanthe was locked in the MasterChef Mini Bar (we’re a billiards room away from MasterChef branded Cluedo)

so instead he had to go stand in the Victorian Murder Tunnel and try not to cry

the fact nobody bothered to move the broken table and unused ladder out of shot says more about this first series than I ever could.

An Unofficial Invention Test Ranking:
1. 4 Completely Indistinguishable Cod and Potato Dishes
2. Adam’s Uncooked Cod and Potato Dish
3. Wait. Who’s Sarah?

Adam and Simon, the pair of fish botherers, were dropped immediately and unceremoniously

while Charlotte and Xanthe were kept exclusively because John wanted to humble them with a trip to a professional kitchen and because Sarah had become the human personification of the Mandela Effect and didn’t actually exist, Andy was the third and final contestant going through. A fact he looked far from enthused by

please sir, just 5 more minutes in the MasterChef Murder Tunnel and someone might come and put me out of my misery!

The Speed of Spice

I really don’t know what to write about this section, if you went to make yourself a cup of tea during it, you would miss the whole thing and it would not impact the episode at all. They basically walk into Café Spice and exit it like Grandpa Simpson

we’re never shown or really told what dishes they’re cooking except for Curry, Rice and Naan with the roles of the contestants being even more undefined – Charlotte seemed to have started a mutiny and taken over the role of head chef reeling off orders to the others

which Actual Head Chef™, Cyrus Todiwala, hated her for and decided to use Andy as a barricade in order to contain her

and while that unstoppable force met its immovable object, Xanthe was just smashing individual cardamom pods with a Looney Tunes mallet

then it was over and Cyrus deemed Andy, the boulder to Charlotte’s Easter Jesus, the most employable. I loved all 240 seconds of it. No notes. Perfect television.

A Two Course Race

As of Series 20, the contestants have 75 minutes to cook their two course menus during their quarterfinals. In series 1, they only had the parish community center until 5pm before the Brownies needed to use it, so all the first series guinea pigs had was 50 minutes! Which does explain why Andy’s starter was a whole unseasoned sweet pepper and two honking chunks of mozzarella in a private pool of madeira wine vinegar

based on this dish, you would never have guessed this series would start a global franchise worth millions and Andy’s haunted expression suggests he felt like the Iceberg that sunk the Titanic was granted a brief spark of consciousness to take in what it had done

his main course at least showed more flashes of vision, effort and a will to still be alive as he played it surprisingly risky with some duck and pink grapefruit

John and Gregg were both sceptical of the combination, however he was confident in his abilities to read from the Jamie Oliver cookbook in his pocket

incredible scenes. John and Gregg were both impressed with how well the duck was cooked and how nice the duck and grapefruit combo worked. Good job Jamie.

Charlotte was dedicating all 50 minutes to slow cooking a fillet of salmon that she’d buried in a shallow grave of coriander seeds that I cannot imagine was very pleasant to eat

and because Charlotte was on a mission to show that she was humble now, she swooped in to identify that the salmon was overcooked because in this series the contestants ate with John and Gregg

John did however point out that that’s the point of a slow roasted salmon, so he still hates her, as evidenced by this absolutely UNHINGED rant about her during the deliberations at the end of the episode

mark that down as the funniest thing Gregg has ever and will ever say, talk about peaking in high school. Also, interesting to see Gregg started out being the not skeevy one.

Charlotte’s second dish was a Stem Ginger Pudding, which she had to try her best to pretend she didn’t know was a John Torode Classic from his time at Mezzo

she was absolutely 100% aware of this information and had to go to great lengths to get it considering the quality of search engines in 2005

RIP, my beloved.

Charlotte’s pudding did end up really impressing both John and Gregg, especially Gregg

JESUS CHRIST, JOHN! You were such a bitch in 2005. But to be fair, Gregg did seem to have inhaled and lost his fork somewhere along the line

the BBC did not have spare cutlery money.

Xanthe, it turns out is the originator of the MasterChef classic of making a risotto and panicking that it’s too simple so serving it alongside a whole chicken breast

they liked it, but it did threaten the stability of John’s vestibular system

but while her risotto and lump of unwarranted chicken had John careening around the studio like someone at Comic Con method acting in a Jack Sparrow costume, he did like her brownie even if it was a little bit too sloppy

and with the sun very obviously setting on her chances to cosplay as Nigella, Xanthe saw her chance and took it

can we start a conspiracy theory that Nigella Lawson died in 2006 in an erotic lasagne incident and was replaced with Xanthe?

A Two Course Dinner Ranking:
1. Charlotte’s Steamed Ginger Restraining Order
2. Crouching Andy, Hidden Jamie Oliver
3. The Other Take Where John Called Xanthe’s Brownie “Orgasmic”
4. Charlotte’s Salmon and Wood Chippings
5. The Inaugural Panicked Risotto
6. Andy, are you ok?

Given that early reality TV thrived off drama and personality, even when it didn’t need to, Andy had proven himself to be a little too competent in the Pro Kitchen so he was out of the question and was released from this brief and horrible bondage he had to endure. This meant Charlotte was going through because Xanthe had made John smile and like her a little bit

I have no idea how this pans out for Charlotte but I suspect they’re trying to break her like they broke Andy.