‘Celebrity Masterchef’ 2020 Heat Three Is a Landmark for the Show

Celebrity Masterchef 2020 is here, with Jon Torode and Gregg Wallace welcoming another suite of 20 celebrities into their realm, where “cooking doesn’t get tougher than this,” except when it does, like in Masterchef and Masterchef: The Professionals, where the challenges are, well, tougher. Here’s what happened in the third heat.

Celebrity Masterchef 2020 Contestants: Heat Three

• Felicity Montagu, longtime actor most famous for putting up with Alan Partridge.
• Lady Leshurr, pop culture rapper, singer, and songwriter best known for her Queen’s Speech freestyle series.
• Amar Latif, TV presenter and entrepreneur, and the first blind contestant on Masterchef U.K.
• Gethin Jones, Blue Peter presenter turned non-Blue Peter presenter.
• Jeff Brazier, Reality TV figure and This Morning regular, known for being the decent guy on castaway drama Shipwrecked many years ago.

Gregg Wallace opens proceedings by inviting Amar, the show’s first blind contestant, to massage his head. They’re both bald. That’s the only reason.

Setting the tone. Jeff visits the food room Market and tries to pull down the polystyrene fake garlic. Felicity is just trying to do her thing while avoiding any Alan Partridge references — Gregg is resisting for now but the same cannot be said for, well, everyone else:

Lady Leshurr reveals that she cooks on a segway, which, sure, while Gethin is having cod-based anxiety. Gregg continues the noble Masterchef tradition of butchering non-white cultures, suggesting that Jeff’s tadka — tempered spices — is a tucker. Well, it is tucker, in that it is food? Unfortunately Jeff burns his tadka, while Felicity impresses — no cheese-smelling required; Amar impresses even more; Lady Leshurr and Gethin are firmly in the middling camp.

Meanwhile Online, the usual “who are these people?!??!” discourse has a new, much more interesting entrant:

It’s always interesting to see which London restaurants will debase themselves for entertainment. Mortimer House Kitchen, which arrived in Fitzrovia last year, and Pomona’s in Notting Hill, which has now closed were the victims destinations this week. But:

So on the merry train goes. The most notable part of the third round is Amar comparing Gregg and Jon to a romantic couple. You don’t need sight to be insightful. Jeff doesn’t recover from his first-round nightmare, with Amar and Felicity again drawing plaudits and looking like the strongest contestants of the series so far.

Amar’s status as the first blind contestant in the U.K. show’s history only serves to highlight the absurdity of the pairs challenge this week, tasked as he and Gethin are with cooking identical apple charlottes while separated by a wall. It has been said before, but this is simply not a good way to get people to learn kitchen teamwork. They went into a professional kitchen BEFORE they learned teamwork? What is the point???

The catering challenge meanwhile lives up to its usual going fine-time jeopardy-no-consequences form, apart from the fact that this time they are actually quite late, and make 120 scientists quite angry.

So, to the critics. Gethin makes a very Gethin dish of fillet steak and red wine sauce — conventional, smart, faintly dull — and sails through; Amar impresses with an honestly excellent sounding green mango and apple chutney alongside his mother’s chicken curry recipe. Lady Leshurr and Felicity Montagu are sadly left to exit, both having shown early promise in what was the strongest heat so far, by quite a distance. Gregg gets Gregg points for not knowing what kataifi pastry is and also not wanting to find out. “I don’t know what that is,” he cries aghast, at Felicity’s feta, honey and kataif dessert. It’s okay Gregg. It’s okay.