Gregg Wallace: There’s strong competition on Celebrity MasterChef

Gregg Wallace admits there is "strong competition" in the upcoming series of ‘Celebrity MasterChef’.
The BBC One cooking show is to return with a cast of famous faces looking to impress judges Gregg and John Torode with their culinary skills over six weeks of kitchen challenges, with former ‘TOWIE’ star Joey Essex part of the line-up alongside retired Tottenham Hotspur soccer player Neil ‘Razor’ Ruddock, Vicky Pattison, ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ professional and DJ Judge Jules to name a few.
The 54-year-old presenter revealed the show’s winner is the person who "learns the quickest" and insisted at times "it wasn’t easy" to decide which contestant should be going home because all the celebrities who took part have quality kitchen skills.
Gregg said: "Can I quote my mate John Torode on this, he says, ‘By week one we know who’s going to win the competition and by week two we’ve sacked them!’ It’s not about the best cook at the start it’s about who learns the quickest. I will say, we have some strong characters in the competition this year and it wasn’t easy sometimes it was not easy!"
Away from ‘MasterChef’, Gregg and his wife Anne-Marie – who he shares two-month-old son Sid with – have worked together to pen ‘Gregg’s Italian Family Cookbook’, and the star confessed it was an inevitable collaboration because he loves the country’s culinary delights, and his wife is "one of the best amateur cooks" he’s ever met in his "life".
Speaking on ‘The Zoe Ball Breakfast Show’ on Wednesday morning (24.07.19), Gregg said "I did a programme years ago for a cable channel with my mate Charlie Hicks and we did a tour round Italy looking at Italian food and I fell in love with it then, that was 20 years ago. Since then I’ve been going to Italy once, twice, three times a year, it’s just a coincidence I fell in love with a beautiful Italian girl, an absolute coincidence.
"We shared a love of the food of Italy, bearing in mind I’m a judge on MasterChef, I’m not making this claim lightly, she is one of the best amateur cooks I’ve ever met in my life, so is her mum, her dad, her nonna – her grandmother’s recipes are in there as well."