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Inside Celebrity MasterChef 2026 with judge Grace Dent: "The amount of nerves and adrenaline in the kitchen is intoxicating"
Grace Dent tells Radio Times that when she set a chemistry test for a new Celebrity MasterChef judge, there was only one winner – Giorgio Locatelli
Kate Hollingsworth/Shine TV/BBC
- Caroline Frost
Published: Monday, 10 August 2026 at 5:00 pm
Subscribe to Radio Times: 10 issues for £10
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.
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It’s a rite of passage in any workplace when you make that shift from being the new kid on the block to the old hand, the one who knows where to find the best coffee, when to go to lunch and who happily takes all the newbies under their wing. For Grace Dent, it’s an evolution that has come quickly and in the full spotlight of hosting our longest-running cookery show, but it’s one she carries with ease.
“I think I’ve been at these studios longer than anybody,” she reflects during our chat on Zoom. “I arrived [at the new home of the show in Birmingham] as the new girl while they were still taking the plastic covers off the ovens. Now I know every inch of it, so I can lead other people around the building to secret bathrooms. I’m like the janitor.”
The new kid for the new series of Celebrity MasterChef is 63-year-old Michelin-starred Italian chef and restaurateur Giorgio Locatelli. It’s a pairing that delights Dent. “Different chefs came in for chemistry tests with me, and from the moment Giorgio arrived he was the person I wanted to be with. He’s a man who knows the glamour and pizazz of hospitality, but also exquisite food.”
Giorgio Locatelli has featured as a judge on MasterChef Italia since 2018 and now joins the UK's Celebrity MasterChef alongside Grace Dent. Stefania D'Alessandro/Getty Images
Crucially, he’s not a chef Dent has ever given a bad review to in her role as a food critic. “About eight weeks before he arrived he opened a restaurant and I wrote a really nice review. Thank heavens, because now we’re stuck together. He pretends he’s not bothered, but he reads every word.”
A longtime food writer who had been a guest judge on the series for years, Dent, 52, is now co-presenter of MasterChef as well as its professional and celebrity versions. It’s a move that has transformed her life.
“The amount of nerves and adrenaline in the kitchen is intoxicating,” she says. “You never quite get used to the fact that you’re at the helm of the biggest cooking show on British telly, but I’m reminded of it every seven minutes of my life. When I go for a walk at in the morning a stranger will call, ‘Grace, Grace…’ and start telling me about a lamb shank they’ve got in the freezer or a sorbet they’re planning.”
She pauses. “I’ve been watching MasterChef since Loyd Grossman presented it, and now when a friend comes to the show I’ll take them on to the set and it’s all there in front of us, that famous kitchen. It’s always kind of mesmerising and that never disappears for me. I feel very lucky, and I never take it for granted.”
Grace Dent on Celebrity MasterChef. BBC/Shine TV/Kate Hollingsworth
It’s clear Dent is in her element, and gratified by viewers’ reception to her upgraded role on the show following the abrupt departures of its previous hosts. “It has been really lovely,” she reflects.
“I hope people see my passion and my love of the show, my empathy for the contestants. But I’ve been around showbusiness long enough to know that whatever happens, happens.”
Just try not to get cancelled, I suggest, and she laughs loudly. “Any of us could, of course, but I’m a 52-year-old woman who doesn’t drink or smoke or go to nightclubs. For at least seven months of the year, I spend most of the day in a TV studio and I go to bed at six o’clock. The show has taken over my life to such an extent that I feel quite naughty if I have a porridge from M&S on the way home. So if anybody can find anything to be upset about, please tell me. I would love to see it.”
Dent sees her role as firmly on the side of the contestants, including this year’s celebrities such as Jason Mohammad, Joe Pasquale and Una Healy. “Jason is probably the loudest person we’ve ever had,” Dent reports, “and he really wants to win. It’s a show where you come in with your veneer, but eight hours in a kitchen with a camera in your face quickly reveals the real you.”
She laughs at the difference between the set-up in Birmingham and Locatelli’s previous gig judging the Italian version of the series: “He had 100 people starting, cooking exquisite Italian food, then he comes over here and it’s Joe Pasquale making a Frankenstein pie.”
She’s equally effusive about the team around her in Birmingham: “When the show’s screened, it looks like it’s just me, Giorgio and the contestants, but there are actually dozens of us there.”
Anna Haugh and Grace Dent on MasterChef. BBC/Shine TV
Sure enough, when I visit the set in early summer, it’s buzzing with the unruffled efficiency of a military operation, and every single person I speak to shares a love both of food and of their role in the show’s production.
Series producer Ryan Daly relishes creating new challenges each series – “If contestants can have an emotional connection to it, that’s brilliant” – but his favourite round is the “mystery box”.
“The fear contestants have when they first see those ingredients, and then you see their minds whirring to create something out of nothing to me is the crux of why MasterChef is so amazing.”
Karim Boumnijel has been the show’s chief home economist for the last decade and has seen food trends good and bad along the way. “The worst was when someone served a quail on the side of a chocolate cake,” he remembers. “The best is about cooking ethically.” And engaging his own lifelong love of good food: “My parents have an allotment and my father was a farmer, so I’ve always known its importance. I don’t like wasting food. For me, it’s about health, joy and being sustainable.”
Over in another prep room, art assistants Jason and Bec are pressing dozens of chefs’ whites, part of their job of making every cooking station look pristine. “All contestants have exactly the same module and utensils to keep it fair,” says Jason. What’s the best part of the job? “Eating,” says Bec. “Once the food’s been judged, we have to take it away, which means we have first dibs.”
My visit isn’t complete without a trip to the temple that is the pot room. Pot washers Archie and Louise take a break from their work washing up to tell me how many pots they have to clean during a series where more than 430 meals are served up. “More than 500 a day,” says Archie cheerfully. And what’s the trickiest item of all to wash? Louise answers straight away: “That’ll be the whisks.”
The latest issue of Radio Times is out on Tuesday – subscribe here.
Celebrity MasterChef is on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday on BBC One from next week.
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Caroline Frost
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