Name: John Torode.
Age: 51.
Appearance: Well fed.
Origin: Melbourne, mate.
Is he that Aussie guy who does that TV thing with the other guy? If by “that TV thing” you mean MasterChef and by “the other guy” you mean Gregg Wallace, then yes, he is.
And they’re food experts? That’s right. Torode is a chef and restaurateur when he’s not on TV. Wallace is a former greengrocer who now goes on TV as much as possible. They’ve known each other since the early 1990s, and have just begun their 13th year of doing MasterChef together.
Holy mackerel tartare! I suppose real warmth between presenters is the magic formula that makes a show, as Top Gear found and Bake Off soon will. Real warmth, yes.
Why are you looking at me in that weird way? Oh, it’s just ... no, it’s nothing.
Look, you’ve been explaining unimportant news to me for 25 years. I know when you’re hiding something. It’s only that Torode and Wallace, well, maybe they each see their friendship differently.
Nonsense! They’re joshing on Twitter all the time. Last week, Wallace said: “I don’t think @JohnTorode1 is very good on @Masterchef tonight. But luckily I’m there to help him along.” “God love you Mr Wallace,” Torode replied, with three kisses. Yet Torode recently told the Mirror: “It’s funny, we’ve never been friends.”
What?! “We’ve not been to each other’s houses ... If we go away to somewhere like South Africa, we do things separately.”
Oh. Well, in order to spend years together, they need a bit of space, I suppose. It’s showbiz. Like the way we pretend to annoy each other. We pretend?
Whatever. The point is that the public doesn’t need to know about it. The point is that Wallace doesn’t know about it, either. Last Thursday, he told Lorraine Kelly: “I film with John six or seven months of the year, so we are very close to each other physically, and emotionally we are very close to each other … I rely on John a lot.”
Poor Gregg! I may actually start crying. Three divorces could happen to anyone, but how will he cope without John? By announcing: “Friendship doesn’t get tougher than this.”
Do say: “We’re looking for absolute perfection. Show us why you deserve to stay in this relationship.”
Don’t say: “At the end of this episode, one of you will be going home.”
