I love my food. Always have done, and probably always will do. Over the past few years, I've also become rather addicted to large swathe of the cookery programmes that appear to be slowly taking over the airwaves. I've seethed silently over Auntie Delia's love of tinned mince and frozen hockey pellets of mash, cooed over Nigella Lawson's obscenely good-looking kitchen, and-on more than one occasion-had to restrain my mother from licking the television screen when she's caught sight of that James Martin bloke who presents Saturday Kitchen.
I do a lot of cooking at home, and take a real pride in my skills in the kitchen. I know how to make a halfway decent loaf of bread, I can bake cakes so good they have been known to make grown men weep and, upon feeding him the fruits of my labours after I attended a Malaysian Cookery Course, my boyfriend once told me that my food was "as good-maybe better" than the stuff he got from his local takeaway. (Charming lad).
However, around this time of year, an alarm clock goes off in my stomach. The alarm clock which compels me to park myself in front of a television at 8.30pm every weekday evening to watch two lardy, hairy, shouty men shovel obscene amounts of food into their mouths like a pair of mutant pez dispensers. Oh yes, it's time to come clean with my guilty little secret. Dollymixers, you can keep your Dancing on Ice and your X-Factor, I, Miss Cay, am addicted to Masterchef.
I'm not sure if there is a helpline a girl can call because she's obsessed with a programme where a man who bears more than a passing resemblance to Ming the Mercilessmakes sex noises everytime he's offered some pudding, but if so, you need to hook me up with it. Of course, I'd never go on the programme myself, that would be madness-I'm not good with pressure at the best of times, and knowing me, I'd end up serving the dynamic duo a turkey-marzipan surprise or some such abomination during the invention round. But somehow there is a certain something about sitting on the sofa with a glass of wine and laughing at people you've never met who believe that they can become an international top chef-type-person by serving up Mushrooms stuffed with coconut and cream cheese, as one contestant did last week.
If you're watching an episode of Masterchef for the first time, a few things to note:
The two presenters will go around shouting "COOKING DOESN'T GET ANY TOUGHER THAN THIS!" a fair bit. I have to disagree with them here. If they wanted to make it really difficult, then the BBC could have them working in a kitchen that had been set on fire.
It gets a bit repetitive: Every single person who is on it has a passion for food. Of course they do-just think about it, if they couldn't cook they wouldn't be on the programme in the first place. However, after hearing this for the 30 millionth time from yet another office worker who has given up their day job to follow their dreams, you can be forgiven for wanting to kick the tv screen in.
Oh yes, and if the person cooking has given up their job because they think they'll win Masterchef, they're usually going to be rubbish. There are a few exceptions to this rule, but not many.
The two presenters have the worst table manners you will ever see on national television. Seriously. The amount of food they manage to shove into their mouths in one go is unholy. I think they must secretly be able to dislocate their jaws to take that much food in, the same way a boa constrictor does when it decides to swallow a large mammal whole.
The series itself lasts AGES. Six weeks in, and I'm convinced the Semi-Final is going to comprise of so many people, it could form its own small Welsh mining community.
Watch it once, and you will become addicted. You will start turning down dinner dates with your beloved to watch the extended episode on Thursday. You will start talking about it on internet forums with other obssessives. You will even start watching the celebrity version, and the rather poor spin-off where chefs had to fight each other over a Michelin Star. Your life will not be your own!
Anyway. After the lovely Sian's liveblogging experiment with "The Devil's Whore" in November, I'm tempted to take on the task of liveblogging an episode of Masterchef so we can all join in the fun. WHO'S WITH ME! Don't all rush at once!