Hands up if you’d watch ScoMo and Albo in a MasterChef cook-off? What do you reckon they’d present as their signature creations in one of those early challenges where contestants are asked to serve up “the dish that you’re famous for”? To quote judge Andy Allen from the current season of Celebrity MasterChef, the creation that “should scream you on a plate and transport us into your home”. Would our political leaders go for something authentically Aussie and not too fancy? Maybe a lamb roast, or steak and three veg?
And while they might be accustomed to the penetrating glare of cameras, how would they cope with a culinary pressure test? How might they react to regretful judgments that the meat was over-cooked, the potatoes dry and the peas and carrots bland? It’s a fun fantasy and part of the pleasure is imagining someone with whom we’re familiar lifted from the environment in which we usually see them and contending with a different set of challenges.
In the Celebrity Masterchef kitchen are: (back row) Nick Riewoldt, Rebecca Gibney, Matt Le Nevez, Dami Im, Ian Thorpe, Chrissie Swan; (front row) Archie Thompson, Tilly Ramsay, Dilruk Jayasinha, Collette Dinnigan.Credit:Ten
The free-TV networks are trotting out celebrity versions of established formats that rely precisely on that pull. Big Brother VIP is due on Channel Seven on November 1. A celebrity Lego Masters is coming to Nine. SBS recently revived its prematurely retired game show, Letters and Numbers, as a Celebrity version featuring comedians as contestants. And Ten’s Celebrity MasterChef is serving up a lively line-up of actors and athletes, along with a comedian (of course), a broadcaster, a fashion designer, a singer and a child of “culinary royalty”.
For politicians, venturing outside their familiar realm of news and current affairs might be motivated by the hope of positive publicity, an opportunity to put a fresh glow on their image, a chance for voters to appreciate them in a more flattering light. They don’t necessarily have to risk life and limb on SAS, or swallow revolting things on I’m a Celebrity . . . , as Sam Dastyari and Jacqui Lambie did, to achieve that effect.
Kitchen Cabinet (2012-16) got pollies cooking, usually in their own homes, while they were being interviewed by Annabel Crabb. The series sometimes drew flak for being too soft, for not asking questions as tough as the press gallery deemed necessary when access to a particular politician was granted. But what it offered viewers was a glimpse of how our elected representatives lived, what they liked to eat and how proficient they were at making it, even if the presentations had probably been thoroughly workshopped with their advisers.
Tony Abbott enlisted the help of his daughters when he cooked a meal for Annabel Crabb in Kitchen Cabinet.Credit:ABC
That series freed subjects from the tyranny of the soundbite and what lingers couldn’t be manufactured. Jenny Macklin’s meticulously organised spice drawer. Mathias Cormann whipping up the Belgian speciality of mussels and fries as he reflected on his youth and the formative influence of financial insecurity after his father lost his job. Tony Abbott enlisting his daughters’ support as he oversaw a barbecue. Their political philosophies and policy positions might be on the record, but what emerged here was a different kind of insight.
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While the current Celebrity versions aren’t serving up politicians, they are fun. MasterChef and Letters and Numbers are notable for their welcoming environments. They aren’t about humiliation and they’re not cast for hate-watching. Letters and Numbers’ admirable experts, David Astle and Lily Serna, don’t poke fun at players who can’t find four-letter words or fail to get anywhere near the target numbers: they warmly applaud effort. On MasterChef, the judges accentuate the positive, praising the flavour of a sauce while sliding past the fact that the pasta was over-cooked, or that there was too much of it.
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