The industry’s new food hero, the NFB’s policy and research manager Paul Bogle, triumphed again in last night’s semi-final (20 April) and is now down to the final four.
He had difficulties with apple jelly and sorbet while cooking for a special meal at Churchill College Cambridge, but then managed to convince the judges with his take on steak-and-chips.
Regular readers of Construction Manager will have seen Bogle contributing to debates on the industry training, payment and sustainability agendas.
But he has had a successful run in MasterChef, for instance cooking the “the dish of the day” – pan-fried smoked quail with a port wine sauce – to secure his place in the semi-finals of the competition.
To survive so far, Bogle had to fill in a “searching” application that explored his motivations, audition by cooking a meal in front of the TV production team, and then juggle his work schedule to fit in MasterChef filming days alongside his day job. Throughout, to preserve the nation’s suspense, the contestants were only able to tell one person what was going on.
But speaking to Construction Manager, Bogle said: “I feel like the luckiest person in the world. It’s just an amazing group of people, you’re in a competition but you feel like you’re working with them. It’s so intense and there’s so much adrenaline, that’s what I love about it.”
"I always wanted to do it, and to take it somewhere afterwards, but I decided to take the plunge and figure out the details afterwards."
Paul Bogle
One challenge involved two teams of four semi-finalists cooking for 90 pilots and support crew from the RAF’s Red Arrows team. “It was surreal, cooking in a tent while there were planes going overhead. One of the great things about it is that you turn up on Day One and then you grow incredibly quickly, you have to up your game every time, at the beginning you’d never imagine that you could do the stuff we did.
“So being in the last group makes you want it even more. When you’re in that environment, you’re really being lifted and able to do things you’d never dream of. So wherever it takes you, you just want to carry on.”
Bogle explained that he’d always loved cooking, with memories of helping his mother from the age of three. As a nine year old, he said that he had cooked the family evening meal for his parents, brother and sister, the three of them being “latch key kids” with two working parents.
Later, he had considered a career in cooking, but was “petrified” by the hours worked in professional kitchens, and decided to pursue an alternative path.
As a keen amateur chef, cooking meals for family and friends and in one case a nine-course celebratory meal, he always wanted to apply for MasterChef. But family and job commitments always held him back, until this year.
“I always wanted to do it, and to take it somewhere afterwards, but I decided to take the plunge and figure out the details afterwards,” he says.
In a press release from the MasterChef PR company, he says he feels there is a “cookbook inside me”, and that he has plans to set up a supper club.
“A great evening is about more than just food and I have seen so many strangers get to know each other and become friends over my dinner table that to create something like that on a regular basis would be great.”
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