When Colin Fassnidge stepped into the I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here jungle, fans were sceptical about what he might be like in that setting. Previously, fans had known the acclaimed Irish chef as a “grumpy character” on My Kitchen Rules, something he fought hard to change towards the end of the series.
“There was a lot of people that liked me and a lot of people that didn’t because the person I had portrayed on MKR was the ‘grumpy judge’, and that’s what I was paid to do. And they said, ‘If you don’t like it, don’t do it.’ But that’s not who I am,” Fassnidge said during an interview with POPSUGAR Australia.
“Being in the jungle, people realised you’re actually just playing a character. For me, I enjoyed the jungle and after the year we’ve had, I think, just enjoy yourself.”
As for fans of the cook, after his turn on I’m a Celeb, people would come up to him and say, “We didn’t realise you’re actually like normal or nice”. In fact, during his time on the Channel 7 series, while Fassnidge became fast friends with former hosts Pete Evans and Manu Feildel, he always had to play bad cop.
“With the edit, you say ten things and they use the one bad and they would say, ‘you’ve got four judges, I need three nice comments and one bad’ and I was like, ‘why do I always have to be the bad one’?” he said.
“They’re like, ‘mate, that’s the job.’ I said to them, especially during the last season, ‘can we change it, because I’m a bit over this? I want to do other things as well.’ They were like, ‘no’, so I said ‘see you later’.”
While being a TV chef has given him a public persona, Fassnidge would love to do a panel-style comedy show like Have You Been Paying Attention. However, for now, he is set to appear on the Friday, April 22 episode of The Living Room in a takeaway-style cook-off opposite former King of the Jungle, Miguel Maestre.
“We just wanted to see how many accents we could get on the one show and have people not understand it,” he joked, before adding that anything he does with Dr Chris Brown (the host of I’m a Celeb…) is always a “classic stitch-up”.
Even though MKR will not be returning any time soon and Fassnidge refused our idea for him to be a part of Network Ten’s iteration of Dancing With the Stars, the chef has been extremely busy, appearing on eight episodes of Adam Liaw’s The Cook-Up, as well as a top-secret new series he can’t yet talk about.
But if you’re looking to get your Fassnidge fix quicker than that, check him out on The Living Room, on Network Ten on Friday, April 22 at 7.30pm.
