Boiling POINT!

TV presenter CRAIG DOYLE on feeling the heat in the MasterChef kitchen...

- STEVEN PERKINS

CELEBRITY MASTERCHEF NEW TUESDAY & THURSDAY, 8PM, & FRIDAY, 9PM, BBC1 COOKERY

Pots and pans at the ready as BBC1 dishes up a 19th helping of its perennially popular cookery competition Celebrity MasterChef this week.

The new run will see a fresh batch of 20 famous faces (see our guide, right) trying to impress judges John Torode and Gregg Wallace in a series of culinary challenges, beginning with Under the Cloche, in which the contestants must come up with a dish based around a mystery ingredient.

Craig Doyle is among the stars competing in the first heat and, although he has been cooking since he was a youngster, the presenter admits that his first day in the contest really put his skills to the test.

Here, in an exclusive interview, Craig, 53, tells TV Times how he tried to keep his cool in the MasterChef kitchen…

What made you sign up?

I’ve always cooked – my mum and dad worked, so when I was a kid, if you didn’t cook, you didn’t really eat. My dad had a garage and people would drop food into him, so he’d come home with a couple of pheasants or a bag of different shellfish and we’d sit there and go, ‘What are we going to do with these?’ I loved it; it was a very creative thing to do.

How did your family react when they found out you were doing the show?