Matt, without a cravat, acting up on Lowdown.

Tomorrow night Matt Preston assumes an acting role as a Detective in ABC1’s Lowdown -and he does it all without his trademark cravat.

“I haven’t seen it so I’ve got no idea what it was like!” he says of the finished product.

“When they asked me to do a cameo I had an image of Pee Wee Herman saying ‘Yes you’re room is ready!’

Or that I would be third policeman on the right, holding the truncheon. And then I saw the script and I thought ‘Oh shit!’”

This week Alex (Adam Zwar) and four other showbiz journalists spend the night in the a reality TV house surrounded by cameras. But something goes awry, requiring a Detective to arrive in the form of Preston as ‘Inspector Thornbury.’

“You always think acting will be easy, just remembering your lines and not bumping into furniture. That’s the old cliché. But I thought ‘I’m in over my head here.’ Which is a good thing to do,” he says.

“Lowdown is such a cracking show and it was written by another journalist-cum-writer …..and me being a journalist-cum-Masterchef meat puppet…” he jokes.

The role came about via an unusual circumstance thanks to writer / director Amanda Brotchie.

“When Amanda was writing it she was in a café and hearing the MasterChef voice and the reason she was hearing the voice in her head is because I was sitting behind her,” he explains.

“She was writing the script and I was behind her. So it was kind of fate.”

Also appearing in the episode are Antony Starr and Colin Lane.

But while acting on television fulfills one ambition, Preston doesn’t envisage any other appearances beyond his Reality TV realm.

“When George, Gary and I started we wanted to go to the Logies to see what that was like and we wanted to do Neighbours or Underbelly!

“Underbelly spoke to me about a corrupt English lord who was a drug dealer, which Jeremy Sims ended up playing and did a far better job than I could ever do. The feeling was that being on Junior MasterChef and playing a corrupt English drug baron was probably not two roles I could do.

“But it’s fascinating to do something that’s totally out of your comfort zone.

“It was interesting as a one-off and I jumped in and I’m terrified of what it will be like.

“But I have the feeling no-one will ever ask me again!”

Lowdown airs 9:30pm Thursday on ABC1.