Abigail Clancy

Aged 21

Food Heaven: Chinese, Victoria sponge and goats cheese salad

Food Hell: Olives

Gorgeous lingerie and catwalk model Abigail Clancy rose to fame as runner up in TV’s search to find Britain’s Next Top Model in 2006. Girlfriend of Liverpool FC and England football star Peter Crouch, Abigail has since appeared in her own TV show Beauty and the Best alongside former super model Janice Dickenson and has just shot her 2008 calendar.

Keen to dispel the myth that models don’t eat, Abigail is a true foodie and loves to cook.

“I love food, so the bigger the better and the tastier the better for me,” says Abigail. “I try to cook every night, but whether it’s good or not Marco can decide. I do a great roast dinner, I do bangers and mash, steak and chips with peppercorn sauce, traditional big hearty food.” Read more & comment »

Lee Ryan

Aged 24

Food Heaven: Anything healthy, Sushi, Sea urchins, Eggs Benedict, French cheese

Food Hell: Fast food

Pop star and actor Lee Ryan is confident that his secret ingredient to succeeding in Hell’s Kitchen - his easy charm and inclination to flirt with the female contestants – will ease him through the competition.

Best known for being part of the hugely successful boy band Blue, Lee has grown up fending off female attention but as a single man in his twenties he revels in the attention, confessing that his ideal dessert would not be a traditional dish: “You mean, WHO would I have for dessert?!” Read more & comment »

Adele Silva

Aged 26

Food Heaven: Beef Wellington with vegetables, fruit salad and a frozen Pina Colada.

Food Hell: Chilli powder or anything really hot.

Actress Adele Silva, best known for playing superbitch Kelly Windsor in Emmerdale, admits she’s not the greatest cook in the world and she’s not wrong. In preparation for Hell’s Kitchen she learnt she doesn’t even know how to boil an egg.

“I decided to make a tuna nicoise salad and kept joking that I couldn’t boil an egg, and I actually couldn’t! They weren’t cooked when I cracked them open. I didn’t boil the water for long enough – I thought it was three minutes from putting them in the water not from when the water was boiling,” laughs Adele.

Sexy Adele is currently single, and wants to become a whizz in the kitchen to wow any potential husbands out there. And who knows she may find love along the way…

“This is why I’m learning to cook - to be a perfect wife in years to come! I’m already a really good cleaner! What’s meant to be is meant to be – that’s my mantra in life. But I’ve been so busy at work, finding love has not been at the forefront of my mind. And now I’m going to be busy learning to cook.”

Adele says she’s always vowed she would only do a reality TV show if she could learn a new skill from it, and thinks Hell’s Kitchen will provide just that.

“To be taught by Marco Pierre White, who is one of the best, is a huge bonus. Obviously it is going to be a challenge but I think it’s one of those things I’ll get a great kick out of and will be a great challenge – hopefully I’ll do really well and I’ll be able to cook.”

Adele really loves good food, and says she admires Gordon Ramsay and loves Jamie Oliver’s cooking but thinks he needs to take a leaf out of Delia’s book and give more instructions.

“It puts me off when I watch him because he just throws everything together and I need instructions on what to do! Jamie Oliver is very much throw this in, throw that in, a little bit of this and I’m like ‘how much is a bit’?!”

As well as perfecting her cooking skills Adele is keen for the public to see she’s nothing like her gold-digging character Kelly.

“My character in Emmerdale is a bit of a bitch, a bit of a gold-digger, not very girly and quite hard – I am the complete opposite. I’m very girly, very bubbly, very giggly and have always got a smile on my face.”

Whilst she’s busy working Adele struggles to find time to cook properly, and usually only has time for chicken salads or tuna pasta, and reveals that she can be quite a fussy eater - she only had her first curry a year ago!

“I thought, stupidly, that all curries were going to be spicy. But then people told me that you can get mild ones, so I tried it and I love it – chicken bhuna! That was about a year ago, and I used to say ‘I don’t like olives’ or ‘I don’t like houmous’ but now I love them.”

Adele describes herself as “a real dolly daydream”, and “a bit of an airhead” but says she will take criticism on the chin if it’s fair.

“If someone is right and I’m wrong then you just have to grin and bear it, throw your hands up say ‘yep I’ve done wrong and I’m sorry’ but then get on with it. I also think it’ll be really fraught conditions anyway so there will probably be a time where I might feel that I might need to go off and have a bit of a cry.”

She already has one thing in common with Marco that may stand her in good stead – they both have Italian blood – and she’s definitely prepared to impress him.

“My nan and my great-nan were Italian. I love Italian food, pasta and things like that. I have the utmost respect for Marco, give credit where credit is due. I am here to learn and I am going to work as hard as I can, always put in 110% and hopefully I will end up one of his star pupils!

“But I’m really nervous about it in the respect that it’s a completely new experience and I’m quite competitive - I always want to do things really well – so if I muck up I’ll really beat myself up about it. At the end of the day if I come out of it knowing I did the best that I could then I can’t go wrong really.”

Adele is so fond of Italy that she plans to go travelling there once she’s mastered cooking in Hell’s Kitchen.

“I want to go off travelling afterwards, go to Italy and maybe go to Australia. I love not knowing what’s around the corner; it’s quite exciting not knowing what to do next. It would be great if more TV work comes up but we’ll just have to wait and see.

“After leaving Emmerdale I just wanted a bit of a break. The producers have been really good saying that they would love me to come back, so I’m just calling it a break. I know I am so lucky in that respect but on the other hand I didn’t want to ruin my character, and with the way that I leave and what I can go back to it should be good,” she says.

Kelly LeBrock

Aged 47

Food Heaven: Organic food, sausage egg and chips, HP Sauce, flourless chocolate cake

Food Hell: Nothing, except maybe tongue

Model and actress Kelly LeBrock is hungry to get into the kitchen, despite being afflicted with an injury, but she confesses that her real strengths lie elsewhere.

“I want to go back to work and I thought that taking part in this show would be a great way to learn how to be a better chef in the kitchen. However when someone asked me if I was good in the kitchen, I said I was probably better in the bedroom so we’ll see what happens!”

Best known for her role in the film Weird Science back in the 1980’s, which turned Kelly into a pin up for teenage boys across the world, she is modest about her enduring sex appeal.

“I am honoured that people remember me and that men out there might still love an old bag like me. But that’s 20 years ago so I hope that they are kind when they see me now.”

Having torn some ligaments in her right hand, Kelly has the injury strapped, but is confident that this won’t stop her taking on everything that Marco can throw at her. Read more & comment »

Anneka Rice

Aged 48

Food Heaven: Barbecued mackerel with salad and new potatoes, and bread and butter pudding with custard

Food Hell: Peeling potatoes

TV presenter Anneka Rice rose to fame as the jump suit clad presenter of Treasure Hunt and even more famously Challenge Anneka, and she cites her decision to take part in Hell’s Kitchen as the result of a family coup.

“When I mentioned Hell’s Kitchen and the training with Marco Pierre White to my kids they said ‘you’ve got to do it mum’. I’ve always had a real problem with it in my mind [cooking] because I have never really enjoyed it and just see it as something that has to be done. The kids reckon that Marco Pierre White might unleash some sort of passion in me for being in a kitchen. At the moment I just never cook if I can possibly help it – I would rather do the ironing, clean out a cupboard and sweep leaves up,” says Anneka. Read more & comment »

Paul Young

Aged 51

Food Heaven: Authentic Mexican food

Food Hell: Losing a finger to a sharp knife

Eighties pop icon Paul Young won fans around the world with his soulful pop music and is most famous for his number one singles ‘Every Time You Go Away’ and ‘Wherever I Lay My Hat’.

A self-confessed foodie Paul dreams one day of opening his own restaurant, and hopes Hell’s Kitchen will teach him the skills to do this.

“I dream of having a little restaurant of my own one day,” says Paul. “I’m not fooling myself that I’m going to be in the kitchen 24 hours a day, but to be able to have somewhere and know what it’s like in the kitchen because I’ve been there. This is a chance for me to get to know the brass tacks of cooking and the way a restaurant is run.”

Already an accomplished cook, Paul thinks he’s good enough to win. Read more & comment »

Jim Davidson

Aged 53

Food Heaven: Pie and Mash

Food Hell: Vegetables and vegetarians

Stand-up comic Jim Davidson is already joking that he’s going to hide the knives in Hell’s Kitchen!

The showbiz veteran says of Marco’s formidable reputation: “I don’t think he’s there to bully, I think he’s there to inspire people, but I am going to hide the knives!”

Jim says: “Seriously, I like cooking, and I thought this was the opportunity to learn off of the best chef in the world. If he says he’s only going to do it for a couple of weeks and then stop doing it again well then I’d like to be part of that.”

A fairly competent cook himself, Jim wants to learn more about the technical side of preparing food. In his repertoire he counts ‘all the roasts’, any Chinese dish, Thai, Indian and says he just ‘throws it all in’. He often ends up cooking mammoth family meals but says he can never get his timing right.

“At Christmas my girlfriend Michelle’s Mum and Dad came over and I was cooking for about 18 people, so I had this bloody great tin full of potatoes and of course the ones on the bottom were turning to mash and the ones on the top where like granite! It went horribly wrong and we had the worst dinner ever.”

Jim is really looking forward to learning all about the finer points of cooking, like how to poach more than one egg at a time.

“You know when you make a vortex in hot water to make poached eggs and you drop one in and the centrifugal force keeps it in the middle, where do you put the other six? You put them on the outside and they go splat and look like cooked snot! I want to know these things. And I want to know about joints of meat as well,” Jim says.

Jim is a true carnivore and absolutely loves his red meat.

“Vegetables are what food eats,” says Jim. “Cows eat vegetables! I’d steal from a vegetarian shop keeper because they wouldn’t have any energy to chase you. I reckon I eat a cow a month. I love red meat, tonnes of it. I eat my steak rare, alive, I just take its horns off and wipe its arse.”

Jim says at home he does all the cooking and he makes sure girlfriend Michelle does the washing up.

“I cook, she washes up, and she’s really good at it as well. She’s not very good when I’m in the kitchen cooking and stuff’s got to be done quickly, she’ll be over nattering to her mates.”

Jim’s career as a stand-up comedian means he rarely gets to enjoy good food on the road, by the time he comes off stage most restaurants are closed.

“I like steak cooked properly although you very rarely get it, especially in this country. Staying in hotels when I’m here on tour, the food is appalling. I’ve been in England four days now doing gigs and all I’ve had since I’ve been here is fish and chips four times.”

He was egged on to take part by his youngest children Charlie, 18, and Elsie, 13, whose words were: “Do it Dad you’ll be famous again!” But the former presenter of hit TV shows The Generation Game and Big Break says he doesn’t view Hell’s Kitchen as a means of reviving his career.

“Elsie wants me to be back on the telly again in England but I can’t be bothered. You spend half your life chasing celebrity and then the rest of your life trying to avoid it. I hate celebrity now, all these people who think they’re celebrities it’s just awful. I just really want to learn. I’m not bothered about it being filmed or anything like that, I want to do this because I like cooking.”

Jim says his favourite chefs include Marco, former Hell’s Kitchen chef Jean-Christophe Novelli, as well as Rick Stein and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall because they both love the British countryside.

“Gary Rhodes is a nice chap, he went out to Iraq for me to cook for the troops one Christmas. I run a charity called The British Forces Foundation and he went out and cooked for me there,” he says.

He then adds that Rick Stein would be in his dream political party.

“Prime Minister would be Jeremy Clarkson, Home Secretary would be DJ James Whale, Foreign Secretary Richard Littlejohn, and I wouldn’t be in it because I live in Dubai!”

Comedian Jim Davidson has become the latest celebrity to join the team at Hell’s Kitchen which launches next month.

Davidson was forced to declare bankruptcy last year, and so hopes that his appearance on the ITV reality TV show will send his career into its comeback phase.

A source told the Daily Star: “This is great news for Jim. Fans love him and he’s been off our screens too long.”

American actress, Shannon Elizabeth, has reportedly signed up to appear in ITV’s reality TV show Hell’s Kitchen, due to air next month.

Elizabeth is best known for her role in teen movie American Pie and recently stated:

“I just don’t cook,” she told the Daily Star. “I’m a horrible cook because I always try to do it with no oil, no butter – no flavour.

“Nobody else will ever eat it. My housekeeper now cooks.”

Britain’s first rock star chef Marco Pierre White will step back into the kitchen for the first time in seven years when he takes over the reigns at TV’s most exclusive restaurant and puts a team of celebrities through their paces.

Hell’s Kitchen is back. And the first ever British chef to achieve three Michelin stars - before handing them back - is in charge.

Marco, described as the ‘Godfather of British cooking,’ will use his considerable talents to turn a group of celebrities into chefs in just two weeks.

And he is already promising to take no prisoners as he attempts to turn the famous trainees into fully fledged chefs.

Marco is sure to feel the heat as he steps back up to the serving plate and he could employ some of his old-school tactics to knock both the trainees and celebrity diners into shape. In the past his legendary temper has resulted in him throwing irritating staff into the bin and dumping customers out on the street. Read more & comment »

In tonight’s episode, Chef Gordon Ramsay gathers the four remaining trainee chefs and breaks the news that he has invited three top chefs to dine in Hell’s Kitchen tonight. As is traditional in Ramsay’s restaurants, the kitchen will be selecting the menu for them. The contestants opt for a menu of spaghetti with lobster, Salade St. Jacques and Beef Wellington.

Out in the dining room, the three master chefs have finished Keith’s appetiser and Jean Phillippe is at the hot plate with their feedback. Unfortunately, the pasta wasn’t cooked uniformly and the chefs were not impressed. Things only get worse when Sara informs Ramsay that she does not have enough salmon to complete the service.

Despite all the trouble, the cooks complete their second consecutive service. They get through the last ticket and Ramsay commends Heather for a job well done. He asks her to pick two competitors for elimination. In the dorms, Virginia takes a radical step and asks Heather to eliminate her. Virginia simply does not feel like she is ready to run her own restaurant.

The four cooks return to the dining room and Heather promptly chooses Virginia and Sara, as she promised. Ramsay reminds Virginia that she won the previous challenge and he promised her a place in the final three. Being a man of his word, Ramsay does not want to withdraw his offer. Fighting through tears, Virginia admits that she does not want to go.

Hell’s Kitchen Raw is a Granada Entertainment USA Production for ITV2. It airs on Friday 27 October 12:30 AM to 1:30 AM

This week, Chef Gordon Ramsay presents the remaining trainee chefs with his signature dish. He then gives them 20 minutes to recreate it. All three contestants are quite intimidated by the task. They rush around the kitchen, searching for the proper ingredients. Keith chooses Chilean sea bass, while Virginia and Heather go for wild striped sea bass.

Fish selected, the cooks try to recreate the puree that accompanies the dish. Keith and Heather start preparing mashed potatoes. However, Virginia, who has spotted Tuscan white beans on a rack in the back, thinks that is the base of the puree. The last seconds tick away and the cooks plate their recreations. Now Ramsay will taste each dish and determine whose mirrors his the most. Ramsay congratulates each dish for being tasty and artfully produced, although only one faithfully recreated Ramsay’s signature dish. Virginia correctly used the striped bass, white bean puree and grapefruit from the original plate and Ramsay therefore compliments her palate. For her reward, Virginia will get to spend time with Ramsay, where he will divulge as many of his secrets and as much information about the intimacy of cooking as possible.

Virginia enters the kitchen for her personal training session. At the same time, Keith and Heather set out to polish all of the glassware and silverware. After showing Virginia some cooking tips, Ramsay moves on and teaches Virginia how to expedite and run the line. His main piece of advice is to scare the chefs, because when you scare them, they remember!

As Heather and Keith set to this week’s punishment they point out that the challenge dish is featured in Ramsay’s cookbook. The very same cookbook Virginia purchased the other day. Keith and Heather vow to not let Virginia win.

Hell’s Kitchen USA 2 is a Granada Entertainment USA Production for ITV2. It airs on Monday 30 October 9:00 PM to 10:00 PM

FOX announced today that it has ordered up a second season of the hit reality Tv show HELL’S KITCHEN.

The show starring Chef Gordon Ramsay and a group of aspiring restaurateurs achieved record viweing figures during its first series which was won by Michael Wray. Fox hope that this second series will reach even higher heights!

Casting information for Season 2 will be available at fox.com.

It has yet to be confirmed whether or not there will be another Hells Kitchen series here in the UK, and the prize is much better in the US version anyway. So if you are interested in starring in series 2 of Hell’s Kitchen USA, you will find the dates and venues of all the casting sessions in America right here!

From the start of the series it has been mentioned in every episode that the winner of Hell’s Kitchen would walk away with his or her own restaurant. I always thought it was a very generous prize, and now it seems maybe too generous.

As Michael was crowned winner of the competition tonight and Ralph stood jealously by, Chef Gordon Ramsay offered Ralph an alternative. Instead of owning and running his own restaurant Gordon offered Ralph the chance to join him in one of his world renowned London Restaurants where he would undertake training to become a world-class chef.

It seems like a great prize and Michael quickly chose to go with Gordon, but the whole thing just looked a bit fake. Michael agreed much too quickly, no one even explained to him what exactly the alternative would be, for example where his new restaurant would be situated or how much he would be allowed to spend on it.

It seems like a much easier (and cheaper) option for the production company to pack Michael off with Gordon for a few months rather than buy him his own restaurant. I suspect this was the plan all along and the prize of a dream restaurant was never on the cards for the winner of this show!