MasterChef: Cooking doesn't get more over-hyped than this.

MasterChef has returned to our TV screens! (Or at least it has if you receive BBC 1). Finally, more shouting about food, just what we need. Presented by Gregg Wallace, who's mouth looks like it is trying desperately to escape his face, and John Torode, professional chef and shouty-man, the show makes cooking seem like the most important and difficult thing in the world.

Of course being able to make a cow, or a horse, into an edible meal, or prepare vegetables so we don't eat the bad bits is important and not always easy, but it doesn't really merit shouting and repeating the phrase "cooking doesn't get tougher than this". First of all the show is just about cooking, something that in a modern day society pretty much anybody can either learn how to do easily, or avoid completely by purchasing ready-made meals. To imply that becoming a MasterChef puts you on a level of greatness somewhere between Nelson Mandela and Jesus is just ridiculous.

Secondly, the level of criticism that the contestants have to put up with is ridiculous. Naturally they are leaving themselves open to this kind of abuse by appearing on the show, so they really shouldn't get too worked up about it. It is still only cooking and if you get knocked out of the competition they won't slap a ban on you saying you can't cook anymore, or force you to get a tattoo on your forehead saying "poor cook".

The criticism itself is quite frankly disgusting. In times where people are having to go to food banks so they don't starve, to start complaining about how the buttery biscuit base doesn't look quite right is disgraceful. People elsewhere in the world are literally starving to death and the best thing we can think to do is, rather than help, get a shouty Australian to complain.

The food in the show is most of the time just as ridiculous. Barely anything that is cooked on the show looks or sounds like what any of us would call a meal. For example sliced, fried potato wedges and la morue cabossé, served with pea purée would translate to us normal people as fish, chips and mushy peas. Of course even if you understood what it was it is unlikely you'd eat it as the portions are so small you'd presume it was on a children's menu.

So yeah, I'm not a fan of MasterChef.