EMMA DUNN meets a woman who started up her own business after appearing on the BBC’s foodie show...

MASTERCHEF is not usually billed as a lifechanging show.

But cooking a range of dishes for judges Gregg Wallace and John Torode while she was a contestant on the BBC show in 2008 inspired Alexis Thompson to quit her job and start her own business.

Now, the 50-year-old is owner and director of Dancing Trousers Cookery School, which she runs from her home in Lechlade and sees her teaching dozens of people to cook every week.

Alexis was working as a regional managing director for a commercial radio company in Yorkshire when she applied to be a contestant on the cookery programme.

“I have always been passionate about cooking. My mum was a great cook and I was always helping her. I got my love of cooking from her,” said Alexis.

“Then while I was working in radio my best friend Sarah suggested I apply for Masterchef. She said she had eaten better breakfasts from me than some of the stuff people were cooking on the show.

“She planted the seed and I thought, I could just go online and fill the form in. The next thing I knew I was having a 20 minute phone interview and two days later they invited me to the studio for an audition.”

For the audition, Alexis made a panna cotta and, as she was living in Yorkshire at the time, a Yorkshire rhubarb compote and shortbread.

Two days later, the BBC asked Alexis and to appear on the show.

During the episode, Alexis was seen cooking a duck breast with shallot and blackberry sauce and celeriac rosti. She also made a rice pudding with rosewater and rhubarb compote.

“They liked it but they said I had put too much rosewater in the rice pudding,” she said.

Despite shining in all three parts of the show, including the invention test, she didn’t make it through to the next round.

But the experience inspired Alexis to take the plunge and change her career after 22 years in radio.

She enrolled on a year-long Cordon Bleu diploma course at Tante Marie in Surrey shortly after the show, and opened Dancing Trousers after moving to Broughton Poggs in Lechlade. “I would never have seen myself running my own business,” she said.

“Masterchef proved I could work under pressure and I realised how passionate I was about food, cooking and people learning to cook.

“I was nervous about opening Dancing Trousers because I was taking a leap into the unknown. When I first had the school ready and made the website live I was thinking ‘what if nobody books?’ Actually, I had bookings straight away.”

Dancing Trousers is an expression Alexis and her best friend use to describe men who are embellishing their stories, and Alexis thought it would be a funny and memorable name for the business.

And it has certainly worked.

She has now run the business for four-and-a-half years and offers a whole range of courses, including baking, macaroons, patisserie, fish, Thai, basics for beginners, a la carte, desserts, Japanese, and gluten free.

Since starting the business, Alexis has never looked back.

“When people make something successful, whether it’s a loaf of bread or pasta sauce, I hear them saying ‘I made that’. It’s a great feeling because at the start of the course they were saying ‘I can’t do this’,” she said.

“Anyone can cook. All you have got to be able to do is pay attention and just learn the basics. There’s no mystery to it. I think everyone should cook, it’s really important that people can make themselves a meal. We have a generation of children who think every meal goes ping at the end of it.

“I do a course for teenagers in the holidays. I have 18-year-olds who don’t know how to hold a spoon to stir something. It’s incredibly satisfying taking someone from not knowing what an onion looks like to being able to make a meal.”

For more information or to book a place on a course visit www.dancingtrousers.co.uk.