Chef - nearly naked

Grab a seat and tuck in.

Broadcaster, raconteur, writer and cook Hardeep is promising to cook up something special amid the anecdotes.

“I never thought I was that funny,” says Hardeep who was runner-up on the first series of Celebrity Masterchef.

“I had a lot of friends that were stand-up comedians, but I thought I shouldn’t do something from the start I knew I was not going to be that good at. But then again Dara O’Briain and people like that, none of them serve up food!

“I cook something from start to finish, from scratch. It changes every night. It is all about the food and stories about food. Certainly my experience that whenever there was food, there were stories is a very Glaswegian and Punjabi thing.

“One of the things about food is that it brings people together. That’s the way I was brought up. I abhor eating in front of the television. I think a lot of social evils are from the fact that people don’t sit around the table to eat. Children can hide things from their parents when they don’t see them face to face over the table.”

Plus, it’s fun. As Hardeep says, think back to your favourite dinner parties and your memories would be of the chat. He’d be horrified if people turned up to a dinner party and just spoke about the food.

Hardeep’s eyes were opened to it all by his own parents: “I talk about my mum and dad a lot in the show. My mum taught me day-to-day cooking and my dad taught me a sense of adventure. From the dads, you get the odd flourish once a month!

“My dad really opened my eyes to world cuisine. His desire was to travel. Since he could not travel the world, he was interested in cooking from around the world.”