I was on MasterChef and it cost me a fortune – I spent a grand just on ingredients for the show

MASTERCHEF is an excellent watch for any of those who love cooking shows, but the intense environment means its not for the faint-hearted.

The pressure in the TV kitchen runs high as contestants aim to please judges John Torode and Gregg Wallace.

Former MasterChef semi-finalist Anthony O’Shaughnessy spoke exclusively to about his time on the show.

Whilst applying the show in 2018, the chef revealed he’d accidentally submitted his application wrong, but thankfully still had a call back.

For his audition, he had to take a pre-made dish to the producers, travelling all the way from his home in Teesside to Glasgow.

Once Anthony knew he was going on the show, he practiced non-stop.

The chef, who now works as the Head Chef at Blackfriars Cookery School in Newcastle explained that he spent around a thousand pounds on ingredients.

He said: “You’re spending so much [money] on testing the dishes and so on and finding the time to do that.”

Throughout the course of the show, off-screen, he would practice dishes for the upcoming round: “I worked it out, I spent about a grand during the course of the show, just buying ingredients to test stuff with again and again.”

Whilst the show’s production buy the food for the MasterChef kitchen, things don’t always go to plan.

The chef told Metro.co.uk: “There was one situation where I was going to make a parmo, and asked for orange cheddar cheese, but they didn’t get it because I don’t think it’s a southern thing.

‘They provided me with white cheese, normal cheddar.”

The filming days are lengthy for the contestants, who don’t stay where the studios are for the duration of the show but rather commute every few days.

Anthony was going back and forth from Teesside to London, and had to get used to some incredibly early starts.

He said: “Pretty much every train I took out to London was delayed.

“I’d get in around two in the morning and then it was up at five o’clock for filming. It was really tiring.”

MasterChef is available to watch on BBC iPlayer.