Age: 69
From: Plymouth
Occupation: Retired software engineer
Cooking Style: "I'm very much a prescriptive cook and not an intuitive one. I have over 70 cookbooks. I like to cook good ingredients simply, hence I love French bistro-style and Italian foods. My favourite cookbooks are by Nigel Slater, Delia Smith, Rick Stein (an honorary Cornishman) and, more recently, Theo Randall and Yotam Ottolenghi. My wife has always encouraged me to cook as she likes eating good food."
Why MasterChef?: "While watching the last series I noticed that some of the contestants were over 60, which inspired me to apply. I think I'm a good cook, so I wanted to apply and prove to myself that I am.
"I also hoped that I might be one of the oldest contestants ever and possibly the only person to have been on MasterChef twice, albeit in two different formats."
Ambition: "I started writing a travel blog in 2017 and followed it with a food blog. I would like to resurrect the food blog and, perhaps, follow it up by writing a cookbook."
MasterChef continues Thursday at 9pm on BBC One and iPlayer.
Neil Wilkes
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