'Celebrity Masterchef just showed Strictly Come Dancing how to do a lineup'

Big news at the opening instalment of this year’s Celebrity Masterchef: the traditional dinner party is dead.

At least, if the first five contestants to enter the BBC’s most famous kitchen were anything to go by, it is.

Not one of them admitted to getting out the posh crockery, fancy tablecloths and place mats back at their celebrity mansions.

“Reality TV star and influencer” (you can suggest that’s TV shorthand for “loud and annoying” if you like - I’m saying nothing) Charlotte Crosby was the first to stick the boot in. “I don’t have dinner parties,” Charlotte yelled. “I can’t be bothered with the mess.”

She didn’t specify whether the mess she was referring to was the mess created while making the food or the mess created during the actual dinner party. However, given her partying track record on Geordie Shore, I’d go for both - with particular emphasis on the latter.

Next up, the bloke from Steps who is almost 50 but still calls himself H, revealed he prefers his guests to bring their own plates of sharing food, which usually stretch no further than “picky bits” such as cheese and nibbles.

Radio 1Xtra DJ Snoochie Shy’s gatherings consist of trays of oven snacks, smiley face potatoes, and a well-stocked booze bar, while This Morning presenter Craig Doyle favours the more informal “tear and share” approach with his rugby mates.

Our only hope was Radio 2 host Edith Bowman, who, despite not confirming whether she threw dinner parties, did reveal she once went to “a place called Modena” in Italy to source recipes. So, it sounds like she might be the type.

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What the indifference displayed by this (admittedly small) sample group means for the future of dinner parties, I’ll leave for our more culinary-minded commentators to debate.

I have much more pressing matters to deal with. I need to tell you how quickly I managed to come up with a Steps song title gag to mark the presence of H in John Torode and Gregg Wallace’s “ultimate culinary showdown”.

You’ll be relieved to hear I got it out of my system within the first five minutes - and it was all down to the large plate of raw prawns John and Gregg wanted H to cook for them.

What’s that? How many prawns were there on H’s plate? Oh, I dunno. 5, 6, 7, 8…

If you think that’s bad, you should have heard the lame Tragedy gag that Torode shoehorned in when he was judging the finished prawns. I won’t repeat it here, but trust me, it’s better best forgotten.

Anyway, Steps puns aside, the important news is that the 2024 run of this show has already provided enough evidence to suggest that it will be just as entertaining as the previous 18 series.

And that’s despite the fact that the BBC has pulled in a less than starry line-up.

In fairness, there are one or two solid showbiz names among the twenty contestants donning the famous apron. Elsewhere, I have a feeling Wikipedia will be fairly busy over the next five weeks or so.

All I’m saying is, when the narrator kicks off the first show by going way over the top with introductions such as “Scottish TV and radio legend Edith Bowman” you know someone is trying a bit too hard to sell it to the viewers.

How I would love it if, just once, the narrator dropped her guard and blurted out something like, “You know, Whatsisname. He was in that thing with the bloke with the funny walk and her off of Brookside. Come on, you must remember him!”

That said, it could be argued that Celebrity Masterchef has actually managed to book a more appealing line-up than the BBC’s so-called flagship entertainment show Strictly Come Dancing this year - and, unlike Strictly, they’ve booked as many women as they have men.

This show also boasts three ingredients which allow it to get away with tossing so many not-so-well-known faces our way: Wallace, Torode and the food.

Wallace was his usual limelight-hogging self in the series opener. He turned up in his favourite deep red waistcoat, which makes him look a bit like a circus ringmaster. He certainly acts like one. Shouting his way through the full sixty minutes, and playing to the crowd with so many (rehearsed?) reaction shots that I wouldn’t be surprised if his next BBC documentary was called Inside The Meme Factory.

You can only imagine how frustrating it must have been for Gregg that JT managed to steal the show from him on the night with just three words of poetry as he described Edith’s disastrous dessert: “Sink-rescued tiramisu.”

Amazingly, despite dropping her mascarpone-filled monument to Modena in a dirty oven tray, Edith managed to survive eviction.

That was largely thanks to dance DJ Snoochie, who had clearly taken culinary inspiration from a disco classic and proceeded to burn, baby, burn her way through to an inevitable early exit.

Still, at least that meant she was able to go and rescue her new dog - who she’d been missing terribly - from his first experience of doggie day care.

I just hope she didn’t take a doggie bag with her. The poor pooch had surely suffered enough.

Celebrity MasterChef airs on BBC One at 8pm on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday.