Neil Perry slams MasterChef 'nobodies'

• Neil Perry dismisses MasterChef
• Contestants "nobodies"
• "More important things going on in the world"

ONE of Australia's top chefs has given MasterChef a huge serve, dismissing the contestants as "nobodies" who don't deserve the fame and fortune the top-rating show delivers.

Neil Perry says MasterChef contestants, hailed as the best amateur chefs in the nation, would struggle to survive in a real restaurant kitchen.

"If you leave MasterChef and think that you are now one of the great chefs of Australia, I think you are probably up for a pretty rough ride," Perry told The Sunday Telegraph.

"These people are just nobodies with very little experience, and [aided by the show] are able to be exposed and have opportunities. That's why people go on the show.

"Most of them don't go on the show thinking they will be opening a restaurant ... most go on there to get enough media fame to be able to go on and do more media things."

Perry, owner of the Rockpool restaurant empire and Qantas executive chef, is the first top chef to openly criticise the ratings juggernaut, which pulls in an average 1.9 million viewers a night, six nights a week, for Channel Ten.

Perry's comments are even more extraordinary because he has been a regular on the show this year, starring in a segment where contestants had to prepare Qantas in-flight meals.

But he dismissed the show as little more than a game show and said it was unrealistic for contestants to believe they could go on to open restaurants or write cookbooks on the back of MasterChef.

"There's a big difference between cooking a proven dish from a proven terrific chef like Christine [Manfield] and going out and opening a restaurant for 100 people," he said.

Central Coast mum Julie Goodwin picked up lucrative endorsements after winning the first MasterChef series, promoting Glad products, Fountain sauces, and House retail stores.

She's also a regular columnist in The Australian Women's Weekly and is set to star in her own TV series, Julie Goodwin: Home Cooked, on the Nine Network.

Last year's MasterChef runner-up Poh Ling Yeow went on to host her own cooking show, Poh's Kitchen, on the ABC. She also signed a two-book deal with ABC Books. But Perry said very few of the MasterChef contestants were worthy of a spot on television.

"I haven't seen anything to suggest that any of them would warrant their own television show on a commercial network," he said.

Perry was unimpressed with the plan by eliminated favourite Marion Grasby's to develop a range of sauces, and Aaron Harvie's idea to open a wine bar, saying they'd need more than marketing to succeed.

"You've got to have a really good palate and you've got to understand the process if you want to put your own spin on it rather than just put your name on it," he said.

"And writing a cookbook is a really difficult thing to do."

Asked if he was surprised to see Grasby eliminated from the show, Perry said: "I'm not disappointed to see any of them go. There are quite a few life shattering things going on in the world, and I think someone being voted off MasterChef isn't one of the big disasters. It's a game show."

But Perry said MasterChef had opened Australians up to a greater appreciation of food.

"The good thing is MasterChef gives cooking more notoriety, it gives people more of an insight into cooking fresh food at home and it gets their kids inspired," he said.

"That's the really great spin-off of Masterchef, not necessarily the talent that it might unearth because there are already many good chefs in Australia."

news.com.au 18 Jul 2010

The purpose of these shows is to keep the masses in a suspended state of 'supification'.

One of the first shows that was unmasked as being 'rigged', i.e. FRAUDULENT was Survivor, YET NOTHING is done about this.

All the shows of this genre, The Apprentice, Dancing with the Stars, etc are fraudulent.

The politics of this are quite simple that being to detract the masses from the real issues of society.

A person who speaks up is labeled 'controversial' or a 'danger to the system', or as in the eyes of the Order of the New World a 'terrorist'.

It is a well know fact to the politicians that if the masses are NOT entertained they WILL riot.

The media and politicians work hand in hand to keep dumbing down the masses.