MasterChef is onto series 20: graduates from the show are driving Scotland's food scene - Gaby Soutar

I fell off the BBC MasterChef wagon a while ago. I’m not sure what ended up giving me the ick, but I think the format became a bit samey. It’s okay, I had a good innings. I managed Eastenders for a couple of decades, but tapped out on that eventually too. As far as MasterChef goes, there are only so many times you can hear Gregg Wallace say “buttery biscuit base”, or, in the first of series 20’s episodes, something daft like, “Your beans are stepping up and shaking my hand and I want to dance with them”.

BEVERLY HILLS, CA - JULY 16: Host Anthony Bourdain attends the panel discussion for "Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations" during the Discovery Networks' Travel Channel presentation at the 2005 Television Critics Association Summer Press Tour at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on July 16, 2005 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images)

In my final days of watching The Professionals iteration, I went through a phase of fast forwarding to the critics’ judging round.

It was the only bit I enjoyed. Jay Rayner, Grace Dent et al are always fair, in their gripes, but it was still fun to watch sweat patches wicking through the contestants’ branded aprons.

I would always roll my eyes when the chefs had to cook for ‘dignitaries’ of some sort. Meh, feed the homeless instead.

Then my love for the show suddenly deflated, like a failed souffle.

They don’t need this viewer. There are still thousands of devotees to the show, which has been running in its current format since 2005, and is still one of the most-watched on terrestrial television.

According to a YouGov poll, it’s second only to The Great British Bake Off, in its most popular food and drink shows of all time status.

Also, it has hugely influenced the way we eat, because there are so many alumni. It’s practically the law that everyone who wins or is a finalist has to follow that up with a restaurant or a recipe book, or both.

In Scotland, the MasterChef posse are running things. There are as many graduates from this telly programme as there are former Oxford and Cambridge students at Westminster.

We’ve got Dean Banks, who was a finalist in The Professionals show in 2018 and has restaurants including Haar in St Andrews, The Forager in Dollar and Dulse in Edinburgh, and Jamie Scott, who won the show in 2014, and owns Sandbanks Brasserie and The Newport in Newport on Tay, among other places.

Executive chef of Rusacks St Andrews, Derek Johnstone won, aged just 24, back in 2008, and our National Chef of Scotland, Gary MacLean, who has written loads of books and owns Creel Caught at Bonnie & Wild, St James Quarter, took home the prize in 2016.

And that’s just a few.

It’s almost all blokes, but not quite, since we’ve also got the excellent Sarah Rankin, who made it to the finals of the home cook version of MasterChef 2022 and has got a cookbook, Kith, coming out later this month.

It does make you wonder what our restaurant scene would be like, without the show’s huge influence. Its older incarnation certainly didn’t seem to have the same impact.

I’m so ancient that I remember the original, presented by the besuited Lloyd Grossman from 1990 to 2000, before he left and there was a MasterChef reprieve until 2005. Grossman’s not-very-catchy catch phrases included “without further ado” and “deliberate, cogitate and digest”, and guests made dishes like “pink gin syllabub”.

Anyway, it was hugely pompous and set in a strangely dark and spooky studio. It reminds me of the days of stuffy haute cuisine, when people who liked food described themselves as bon vivants.

Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer did an amazing spoof of the show on The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer, which I revisit on YouTube once in a while, if I need cheering up. In it, Grossman has long pointy Der Struwwelpeter fingers and a swollen head, and pronounces the show title Maarsterchef. And, of course, he floats.

We need no explanation. It’s Vic and Bob, after all.

Anyway, although I’ve given up MasterChef, I still watch the occasional food show. You can’t avoid them. They are such a lifestyle telly staple, second only to travel or interior programmes.

However, I do prefer something with a bit of adventure. There are only so many bland white studio kitchens you can stare at.

I’m a fan of anything Nigella or Rick Stein, and The Hairy Bikers are loveable too. Dave Myers will be missed.

I’m very glad that Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares isn’t so influential anymore. While that was on, back in the Noughties, journalists were often dispatched to spend a day in a kitchen. That is how I once found myself dispatching two boxes of live langoustine.

However, as far as telly goes, my favourite show of all has to be the late chef and writer Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown, which is still available on Netflix. Sure, he seems to be a bit obsessed with sea urchin and does an awful lot of ju-jitsu, but this is a documentary with soul. And it’s funny. Unlike MasterChef, which, dancing beans aside, can be awfully po-faced.

In Parts Unknown, there is a Scottish episode, where lovely places like the University Cafe in Glasgow get a mention.

It’s not quite the same, but Phil Rosenthal also recently devoted an episode to Scotland in his Netflix series, Somebody Feed Phil. Leith chef Tony Singh pops up, and there are cameos for Edinburgh’s Roseleaf Bar Cafe, and Shawarma King in Glasgow. It’s a fun series too.

Food and travel combined is more up my street these days.

Still, if you prefer to “deliberate, cogitate and digest”, continue to fill your boots with MasterChef. There will be MANY more series to come.