Last night’s TV: MasterChef: The Professionals (BBC2); The Secret Life of 4 Year Olds (Channel 4)

Happiness may not be the best recipe for MasterChef success

The professional MasterChef team are back: Marcus Wareing (left), Gregg Wallace and Monica Galetti (BBC)

For budding MasterChef Fernando, the most damning faint praise I may have ever heard was delivered to him by proper top chef Monica Galetti, who had just tasted his steak diane all blood and gristle, and a complete absence of proper technique (doesn’t anyone realise you have to pummel the sirloin with a mallet first?). It’s difficult to believe she was trying to be kind when she told Fernando: “Clearly you don’t know what you’re doing, but I appreciate that you have given us a plate of food”. Well, it was the least he could do, and he did it.

Poor Fernando. Before his ritual humiliation he’d cheerfully outlined his culinary philosophy that “if you’re happy, food is always better”. That turned out to be not quite a sure-fire recipe for success. I have to say, though, that while his dishes were pretty inedible – his tequila-infused seafood extravaganza simply ended up beached on the judges’ plates – he himself was a more interesting blend of influences. Originally from Mexico but now hanging out in the kitchens of an art gallery in Northern Ireland, he had acquired an accent that was part Speedy Gonzales and part Martin McGuiness, so he sounded like a terrorist in a hurry. He was, though, extremely sweet, just like his raspberry pistachio tart.

For someone, i.e. me, whose idea of cookery is bunging a Pop Tart in the toaster, who searches for the instructions on an egg, and whose idea of a sophisticated meal out is chicken katsu at an All Bar One, MasterChef: The Professionals was more palatable than it had any right to be. OK, it was about twice as long as it ought to be, comprising a whole hour of inevitably repetitive baked pollocks, but then most telly shows are too long nowadays, which is odd considering we’re all supposed to have such short attention spans. Still with me?

Anyway, although I have eaten in one of his restaurants (I was joshing about being a food philistine) it was nice to see what Marcus Wareing actually looked like. Before last night, to me Marcus was just a plate of grilled Cumbrian venison, endive, quince, venison and pig’s trotter terrine, with seasonal cabbage, you see. He’s the hard boiled one out of the three judges (who include presenter Gregg Wallace), and is possessed of a “resting bitch” so formidable I daresay it could curdle anyone’s crème anglaise. There’s another helping of this tasty contest tomorrow and the night after, and thence for about seven weeks to come; or until you’ve had your fill and are ready to explode, like Mr Creosote after his wafer-thin mint.

I’ve never had much time for those “kids say the funniest things shows”, because, compared to, say Groucho Marx or Ricky Gervais, they really don’t say the funniest things at all. Mind you, the idea of a funeral being like “going to Legoland” did make me think a bit about an alternative setting for the usual exequies. The infantile concept popped up on Channel 4's The Secret Life of 4 Year Olds, which is a fairly blatant attempt to intellectualise the “kids say the funniest things” genre, and, I have to say, only partly succeeds.

I did though find it quite striking how well-formed the personalities of these little apprentice adults were, and, just like grown-ups, how bullying and nasty some can be. All the efforts of the assembled child psychologists to rationalise this behaviour could not shift me from my opinion of Fabian, for example, who is what I would characterise as an archetypal “little sod”. He liked nothing more than to make all the other kids cry and make their lives a misery. I wonder if he’ll grow up to become a journalist?