MasterChef's Gregg Wallace and Cathryn Dresser set to cook up a storm at Swindon Food & Drink Festival

GROWING up Gregg Wallace aspired to follow in his grandfather’s footsteps and join the Navy.

His plans were scuppered when he was summarily thrown out of school at the age of 14.

Resourceful he found his feet and dabbled in every trade imaginable from building to taxiing customers around London.

In those early days very little presaged his rise as a household name and judge on one of the most avidly followed cookery competitions since the invention of the television set.

“My grandpa was in the Navy so when I was younger I wanted to join the Navy too," he recalls. "I went to London Nautical School but I was thrown out at 14. I had lots of different jobs. I was a taxi driver, I did roofing, I worked in a chemical plant. Then I answered the ad in the Evening Standard when I was about 23.”

The advert in questions was for a warehouseman in New Covent Garden Market.

“I got the job and I really enjoyed it. It thought it was so easy. All I had to do was make friends with chefs. A year later I opened my first company, George Allan’s Greengrocers. It was in October 1989. I was 24 years old.”

The company eventually built up to a turnover of millions.

It is through the venture he first met his fellow MasterChef judge John Torode, whose Chelsea restaurant was supplied by Wallace.

His stepping stone to a television career, like most life-altering events, happened quite by accident.

It all started with an interview by a food magazine. The next thing he knew, he had been recommended by the journalist - who happened to work for BBC Radio 4 - for the station’s culinary programme.

A year later he and his friend Charlie Hicks were offered their own radio show Veg Talk. Gregg went on to become the first ever presenter of the Saturday Kitchen.

“TV has been the highlight of my career,” he says without missing a beat. “It has been incredible. I never expected it would happen. Who could ever imagine it? You can’t go to TV school. I like being out there meeting people and talking about food. The process of making TV fascinates me. There a camaraderie that comes from the camera crews. MasterChef is ten years old and we’ve made a lot of good friends over the years.”

After a decade on the talent show and its spin-offs, one might expect the father-of-two to get rather fidgety, and yet he simply can’t stay away. In fact he is as studious as he ever was; tasting every single dish leaving the kitchen with as much zeal as he did on the first day of filming. As far as crosses go, it is a fairly pleasant one to bear.

“You never ever think ‘I can’t take another bite’. It’s still very exciting for me now. I love food. I’m fascinated by it.

“What I love about MasterChef is watching people fulfil their dream, watching people become amazingly talented. What amazes me is that we keep finding new talented people every year. I always worry we’ll run out but we never do.”

That is not to say the odd dubious concoction dreamt up by a well-meaning but thoroughly misguided contestant has not made him recoil in the past.

“The strangest combination we had was a roast quail on chocolate cake. I don’t know what it was meant to be – if it was a dessert or a main course. I still ask myself the same question. It didn’t go down well at all. Everybody hated it.”

While his meal of choice after a long day at the office is mince lamb, boiled potatoes and tinned peas, his thoughts wander to polenta – which is on the menu for that night’s dinner - as the interview comes to close. The Wallace household is currently on an Italian cuisine spree.

“At the moment we are working our way through an Italian cookbook, cover to cover. Me and my girlfriend like to cook together.”

But Italy’s fragrant cuisine will be relegated to the background in favour of leafier considerations at Swindon Food and Drink Festival.

“I’m likely to be presenting artichokes in different ways. I find that people are afraid of them.”

If the chunky vegetable send chills down your spine, his demonstration is for you.

Gregg will join the festival at Lydiard Park on June 27 at 1pm. To buy tickets to the event go to swindon-festival.com.

“I’M not serving green carpet to Mary Berry.”

Adamant, Cathryn Dresser scooped up the remains of the strudel dough she had clumsily sent flying through the air only to get mottled in strands of carpet and started again from scratch. Needless to say, the incident has gone down in Great British Bake Off history.

“We still watch the episodes - I recorded them - and the bit with the carpet still makes us laugh,” the 30-year-old chuckles. “The strudel landed at Danny’s feet. I really couldn’t serve Mary Berry green carpet. I just couldn’t.”

Edging closer to the coveted final each week despite some teacake and bun-induced panic attacks - was quite beyond anything she had dared to hope.

It certainly seemed impossible just a year previously when her application to the second series of the BBC programme failed to fetch her a spot in Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry’s baking arena.

“I filled in the form for series two and heard nothing,” she recalls. “I filled it in again for series three. I thought I wouldn’t hear anything the second time but I did.

“Each time I made it to the next step was such a massive bonus.

“I did find Paul very scary. Because Paul and Mary are in the judging role they don’t spend a huge amount of time with us. They had to be impartial. Mary is even nicer in real life. Paul judged us a bit more harshly but that’s because he really wants us to do well. I had a bit of meltdown in the episode were I left and he came to me and said, ‘You can finish this challenge. Just make things a bit simpler’.”

Since her Bake Off days, Cathryn’s life has transformed beyond recognition. Despite being eliminated just before the final, the programme was a stepping stone for the mother-of-two. After the show she launched a market stall with fellow contestant Sarah Jane in Sussex. Soon Cathryn was invited as a demonstrator alongside Paul Hollywood (“It was still scary”) at the Good Food Show. She has also appeared ITV’s This Morning. Last year she released a book, Let’s Bake, featuring many easy recipes to encourage little ones to have fun in the kitchen.

“I love baking with my kids; they are almost seven and 11. And they were able to be really involved with this book and taste the recipes. I wanted to write a book that was different and played to my strengths. It’s more simple and the recipes don’t take too much time. I wanted to show how easy baking can be.”

As modest in real life and self-effacing as she appeared on the Bake Off, Cathryn’s baking ambitions blossomed relatively late (in her opinion anyway). Moving out at the age of 18 and leaving her family not to mention her expert baker mother behind, prompted her to take up the cake-making baton.

Since opening her own shop, The Little Handcross Bakery last August, Cathryn has not had a moment to herself.

“It was maybe a bit foolish of me,” she quips. “I have to start at 3am - it’s just me doing all the baking - and I’m quite often here until 7pm. It’s hard work but it’s good fun. It was a tricky juggling act with the children. I bribed them with cake at first. It doesn’t really work anymore. It’s made me a much more confident baker.”

While she freely admits nothing compares to whipping up a good Victoria sponge, gorging on them is quite another kettle of fish.

“What I love most is making cakes but I don’t really each much of it. It doesn’t do it for me. Maybe it’s because I make so much of it. “I love bread – I could eat sandwiches all day long.”

Lessons learnt from the Bake Off have guided her business decisions. Chief among them was steering clear of the dreaded peanut butter filling.

“ I made a peanut butter recipe on the Bake Off and I don’t actually like peanut butter. So I couldn’t really judge whether it was good or not and it wasn’t. One important thing I’ve learned is that you should only make things you like yourself. The flavours have to be to your taste.”

A word to the wise.

Cathryn will share tips and show off her baking skills at the Swindon Food & Drink Festival on Saturday, June 27 at 2.30pm. To buy tickets to the event go to swindon-festival.com.