Chris Badenoch denies MasterChef cheating claims
Former MasterChef contestant Chris Badenoch is accused of having cheating during the show via text messages.
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MasterChef contestant Chris Badenoch has denied cheating claims aired on A Current Affair.
Reporter Martin King confronted Badenoch, who finished third in the TEN reality series, asking him about cheating on the show via text messages.
Badenoch is alleged to have used his mobile phone to text ex-girlfriend Gemma Pritchard and asking her to pre-order ingredients for upcoming challenges from Coles sueprmarkets. The order is believed to have saved him precious time during the 15 minutes they had in the store.
Pritchard said she thought she was helping a friend.
“At the time I thought I was giving my partner emotional support, and I think just about anybody would have done the same thing. I wish I hadn’t have and yes I do feel incredibly guilty about it,” she said.
Badenoch denied the claims by Martin King.
“I didn’t send those texts,” he said, “I’m not prepared to talk about it.”
ACA also heard claims from a former landlord that Badenoch owes between $11,000 – $15,000 in back rent and repeated rumours about other supposed women in his life.
Host Tracy Grimshaw said MasterChef relaxed restrictions on mobile phones halfway through the series but only for reasons of contacting family members.
It took a while, but eventually the bad news behind the scenes of the year’s biggest reality show have emerged, most of it targeted at the glum, rather unkempt Badenoch who fits a media image of being the show’s bad boy.
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- Tagged with A Current Affair, MasterChef Australia
17 Responses
Masterchef Australia is being shown on TV1 here in NZ at the moment. I can’t believe that Julie Goodwin won this contest. Chris is by far the most talented in this competition. He is confident competent and innovative. Julie is a fumbling messy sweaty shocker. A mummsy homecook, not a Masterchef, in my eyes.
The judges seem to jump to her every whim, mopping up the crying tears.
Naf, not good.
Chris, Justine and Poh were by far the best three cooks on that show. One tiny incident such as the one mentioned shouldn’t do anything to dull what was otherwise an impressive display of unique talent from Chris. He had a real passion for what he was doing too, more so than some of the others.
Seeing Julie win disgusted me. She was hopeless under stress, and would fail as a chef. Her cooking was for the most part below par and poorly presented. She had zero management skills, and appeared to have gotten through playing the “crying” card. Can’t believe the whole thing appeared to have been decided on how crisp her chocolate was…they made far too big a deal of that. Just leads me to suspect there were other motivations for letting her win.
ACA dug up this dirt? All tosh. I guess that makes them toshers!
(Sorry for that excrutiatingly bad joke).
And yes how exactly did ACA get the SMS transcripts????
Maybe Godwin Gretch hacked into his phone and faked the messages- there’s a thought.
Very grubby by ACA to do this sort of story, obviously trying to ruin Celeb Masterchef, but lets be honest they went after the guy who came third and it was a bit of a nothing story in that he failed at that challenge anyways.
It was entertaining to watch the ex girlfriend squirm a bit, and basically admit guilt.
You knew it was only a matter of time before ACA would do something like this! I saw the ad have no interest in MC so didn’t even waste my time watching it.
@BM-Dog: they got it from Malcom Turnbull’s office.
Hey harry,yeh of course i wanted Chris(or justine) to win he was a talented creative chef,julie will never be more then a good home cook who excells at lamb and mash:) that’s what i meant,that being a very good cook is julie’s ceiling and she was a poor winner of a great series.
I’m intrigued as to where ACA got its transcript of the text messages, since they apparently didn’t get it either from Chris or from Gemma Pritchard.
He’s obviously not very good at cheating – he bombed out badly in that particular challenge…..
Sounds like, area 51 of televisionland.
An interview on 3AW today indicated there were some legal issues with the story.
Lesson to anyone going on a reality TV show, if you have anything to hide, it is likely it will come out.
No chef is allowed to participate on MC. You must have no qualifications/previous experience of work as a chef to enter. And Koverstreet, as if you wanted Chris to win over Julie.
If skill won Julie wouldn’t have come close to winning she was a home cook not a chef.
Chris came out of that segment looking very bad indeed.
Because of how his ex-girlfriend answered the questions, I think the claims are most likely correct. I guess it goes to show that skill, and not sneak, wins at the end of the day.