As head judge on Strictly Come Dancing, Shirley Ballas is usually a vision of composed elegance. Take her away from the dancefloor and put her in a kitchen, however, and it’s a different story.
‘Frankly, I can’t cook,’ she says. ‘Could I do a plain roast dinner? Yes. Can I make a baked potato? Yes. But I have no refinement at all, especially when it comes to sauces or slicing vegetables.’
She bursts into giggles, recalling a plate of spaghetti she cooked for her partner of two-and-a-half years, theatre actor Danny Taylor, which was so inedible that she ended up throwing it in the bin. ‘It was like wallpaper paste,’ she hoots.
Which doesn’t make Shirley, 60, the most obvious choice for a new six-part ITV cookery contest that pits her chopping, simmering, roasting and basting skills against those of seven other celebrities. But then again, being a bit of a novice might just add to the fun.
A new six-part ITV cookery contest will test eight celebrities’ cooking skills. Pictured: Chef mentor Rosemary Shrager (top, centre) with (L-R) Shirley Ballas, Harry Judd and AJ Odudu
If this sounds like familiar territory in the mould of The Great Celebrity Bake Off, there’s one notable difference: each celebrity on Cooking With The Stars is paired with a professional chef mentor who is tasked with taking them from passionate amateur to restaurant-level cook.
‘It’s like Strictly, except in the kitchen,’ says one of Shirley’s rivals, intrepid TV presenter AJ Odudu, 33. ‘You’ve got professional pairings, the meals are like the routines they have to learn, and then at the end there’s the equivalent of a dance off, except it’s a cook off.’
It’s a fair comparison, given that many of the celebrity cooks are novices and the professional chefs effectively become rivals too via their protégés. ‘We all wanted to win the competition, but of course it wasn’t us doing the cooking, it was the celebrities; we could only give them the tools to make it work then stand back and watch,’ says Rosemary Shrager, 70, who mentors comedian Johnny Vegas. ‘But I blamed myself every time something went wrong. I thought I wasn’t good enough.’
The format sees the eight celebrities produce a different dish against the clock each week, with the guidance of their mentor. The dish is then judged by the other professionals. The two voted bottom each week must then fight for their right to remain in the competition by creating a dish without any help from their tutor. The result of this cook off is decided in a blind tasting by all the professional chefs – which means they could unwittingly vote off their own apprentice.
Taking part alongside Shirley, AJ and Johnny are McFly drummer Harry Judd, TV presenter Denise Van Outen, comedian Griff Rhys Jones, former Coronation Street actress Catherine Tyldesley and DJ Naughty Boy.
The Voice’s Emma Willis and Bake Off: The Professionals host Tom Allen co-present the show. It’s an eclectic crowd, although by all accounts everyone got along famously, having bubbled together in a hotel for 11 days before the intense six-day filming schedule. In fact they formed such firm friendships that all manner of meet-ups are planned in the future.
Taking part is Strictly Come Dancing’s Shirley Ballas, 60, who claims she ‘can’t cook’ and said she once cooked a plate of spaghetti for her partner, theatre actor Danny Taylor, that tasted like ‘wallpaper paste’. Pictured: Shirley tests her work on the show
The atmosphere at Weekend’s photoshoot today confirms this – everyone seems genuinely delighted to see each other again. ‘It’s the most fun I’ve had on a TV show,’ says Harry Judd.
Make no mistake though, while there was camaraderie in the kitchen there was intense rivalry too.
‘Everyone wanted to do their best. There was a bit of blood and sweat. And there were tears as well – I mean literally a couple of people cried,’ reveals Harry, 35. It turns out the blood is literal as well.
‘I managed to cut myself several times,’ he adds. ‘Thirty seconds into the first meal I was cooking I sliced off the end of a finger with a potato peeler.’
Harry was in good company here, as Shirley also sliced off the top of her finger early on. ‘There was blood everywhere,’ she says. ‘To be honest, everywhere you looked someone was sporting a plaster. The poor first-aid man on set was in and out like nobody’s business. Johnny burned his hand at one point, so he had a big bandage on too.’
Shirley couldn’t have hoped for better chemistry with her pro chef Joseph Denison Carey, who’s proved a hit with viewers on ITV’s This Morning. Not only is he ‘a beautifully raised young man’, she says, but a superstar in the making and an excellent mentor. ‘He’s young but he’s a natural born teacher. He’s very thorough and patient, just a kind soul. He suited my temperament really well.’
Nonetheless, she’s still baffled by quite how much effort it takes to produce a decent meal. In fact she’s still hyperventilating over a dish that required ten packets of butter in the pan. ‘Ten!’ she exclaims, eyebrows raised. ‘And that was just one part of it. There was a lot going on – ingredients, bowls, sieves, scales. Which knife do you cut this with? How many pounds of that do I need? It was a lot to take in.’
McFly drummer Harry Judd (pictured), 35, said despite the literal blood, sweat and tears, it’s the most fun he’s ever had on a TV show
That’s what makes it fun to watch, of course. ‘I think everyone can relate to cooking dramas, can’t they?’ says Harry, a father of two with his wife Izzy (baby number three will join Lola, five, and three-year-old Kit in October) who admits he doesn’t really cook at home.
‘Part of the reason I was tempted to do the show was because I love a challenge and I wanted to learn something new. Izzy thought it was hilarious when I signed up, as did my mum… in fact as did everyone I know! I cooked the other day for my family – I’d never done it before and I was nervous. The stakes are high.’
Yet after a very dodgy moment early on in filming – ‘I thought, “This is a disaster, massive fail, I’ve embarrassed myself on TV!”’ – Harry reminded himself that having navigated the terror that is the Strictly dancefloor to become the 2011 champion, he can attempt just about anything. ‘I always say to myself when I do TV shows that this isn’t a patch on Strictly. My mantra has become, “If I can do Strictly, I can do this.”’
AJ Odudu takes a different view. She first made her name presenting Big Brother spin-off A Bit On The Side, and in 2019 she took part in Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins, in which she jumped out of a helicopter, plunged into freezing water and carried 45kg weights uphill.
She followed that as co-presenter with Freddie Flintoff on last year’s Don’t Rock The Boat, which saw 12 celebrities attempt to row the length of Britain, and next up she’ll be helping people get their businesses back on track after lockdown with Emma Willis in Emma And AJ Get To Work. So whipping up a soufflé must be a doddle, right? Wrong.
‘I honestly had sleepless nights during this,’ she confides. ‘Beforehand I thought, “I’m an all right cook and it’s just going to be a laugh.” But then under the time pressure, in a studio filled with top chefs, it’s really nerve-racking. I was trembling at times.’
The Blackburn-born presenter was tempted to do the show in the hope of adding a few more dishes to a limited list. ‘Basically, I’ve got five recipes in my locker that I made repeatedly throughout lockdown – Lancashire hotpot, steak and chips, a few Nigerian dishes I learned from my mum – and I thought what better way to come out of the most ridiculously tough year ever than to be paired with a top chef and have the opportunity to expand my repertoire?’ she says.
The famous faces are paired with professional chefs who teach them how to prepare meals and at the end there is the ‘equivalent of a dance off, except it’s a cook off’. Pictured: Chef mentor Rosemary (centre) looking stressed
AJ quickly developed a friendly rivalry with ‘adopted brother’ Harry and bonded with her mentor Jack Stein, who is now blazing a culinary trail alongside that of his father, Rick.
‘Jack was always calm,’ she says. ‘Timekeeping was my biggest challenge. And did you know you could burn oil? On the plus side, I think I was the only one who didn’t end up with a blue plaster on my finger.’
She’s certainly embraced the show, revealing she’s now the proud owner of electric scales, a pasta-making machine and a thermometer to ensure that her new range of fish dishes are served at just the right temperature.
Bringing a chef’s perspective, meanwhile, Rosemary says she underestimated the stress cooking on camera would have on the contestants. ‘All we could do was give them recipes, make them as accessible as possible, test to see if they could do it within the time,’ she says. ‘But the moment you get into that studio it’s different. I hadn’t taken into consideration the pressure. Then you can’t do anything, it’s out of your hands.’
Shirley Ballas: ‘My cancer scare left me white as a ghost’
Shirley Ballas has lost four family members in 18 months (pictured with her father George and her mother)
Shirley Ballas has had a tough 18 months. She’s lost four family members, among them her beloved dad George (pictured above with Shirley and her mother), who died of a heart attack in April aged 83. She contracted Covid in March, which left her bedbound for two weeks, and is having tests to see if she has Long Covid. On top of all this, she’s enduring a cancer scare after finding a ganglion cyst (a fluid-filled lump) in her shoulder.
‘The guy at the hospital used ganglion and tumour in the same sentence, and that left me as white as a ghost,’ she says now. ‘Cancer and heart attacks run through my family, so it’s a bit… well, I just have to get on with it. I’ll get the results in a few weeks. My mum says it will be what it’s going to be, and sitting worrying about it isn’t going to help.’
Prone to bouts of anxiety, Shirley also says her Covid experience left her feeling borderline agoraphobic to the extent she wasn’t sure she could commit to this show. ‘After being locked down with Covid, I was nervous about leaving home. I went back and forth about taking part, it took a lot to get me out the house,’ she says. ‘I was so used to being in my clean, bleached space.’
She was delighted to be partnered with Johnny, another culinary novice. ‘He’d never boned a chicken, never done a steak properly, never done a curry, but he’s funny and I wanted humour so I wanted him,’ she says. She also correctly surmised that Johnny’s pottery-making prowess – he studied ceramics and showcased some impressive talent on The Great Pottery Throw Down, on the BBC at the time – might give him some transferable skills. ‘And I was right. His knifework and dough work were incredible – it was all the other bits in between that were the problem.’ The pair are now firm friends. ‘We come from different worlds, but the two worlds met and we’re friends for life now,’ she says. ‘It was a lovely group. Filming was hard work but joyous.’
Shirley’s such a convert she’s not ruling out taking part in Celebrity Bake Off. ‘I did this show because I wanted to prove to my mother – to everybody really – that no matter what age you are you can learn a new skill,’ she says. ‘I’d love to do some other cooking shows now. Other than Strictly, it was the most fabulous experience I’ve had.’
Last year’s Covid-defying series of Strictly already feels like a lifetime ago for Shirley, although her pride in what they pulled off is palpable. ‘It’s extraordinary that the show went ahead because week after week we were saying, “Is it on, is it off?”,’ she says.
‘So to get through was amazing. You would not believe what it took to put that show on and get it to the end but I’m so glad we did. It showed everything can be worked around. Where there’s a will there’s a way.’
This year’s series is scheduled for a full season in contrast to last year’s nine episodes. While Shirley already knows the celebrity contestants she has to remain tight-lipped – although she does tease that we have a treat in store.
‘It’s a fabulous cast, the energy is going to be great,’ she says. ‘I love it when the public complain in the first week that they don’t know who the people are, and by week three they’re falling in love with them and by the final they’re rooting for them and having a go at the judges about them.’
Bruno Tonioli will not be one of those judges, having pulled out this year due to his filming commitments with the US version of the show, Dancing With The Stars. Shirley’s overjoyed with his replacement, though, her old pal Anton Du Beke.
‘I’m beyond excited Anton is joining the panel,’ she says. ‘I’ve known him for over 30 years. He’s a gentleman in every sense of the word and it’ll be a delight to have his wisdom and knowledge.’ That sounds like a recipe Shirley will have no trouble getting to grips with.
Cooking With The Stars starts on Tuesday at 9pm on ITV.