MasterChef, series 247… and the gushing gastro-nerds were soon serving up their absurdly overcooked soundbites.

Take it away 51 year-old business consultant John: “I can think about nothing else other than food. It’s the one thing I think about when I wake up in the morning, it’s the last thing I think about at night when I go to bed and during the day it’s there constantly.”

Naturally, three dismal dishes later he was done. Kicked out and on his way back to obscurity to think about the food he’s not much cop at cooking. “I’m proud of what I achieved,” he insisted after achieving nothing.

But over to Chris as he pondered the daunting nature of the challenge ahead: “I’ve never cooked with quail.” Gregg Wallace: “I’m glad you’ve never cooked with quail. Because you’re cooking with pigeon.”

The Beeb’s long running culinary contest takes itself incredibly seriously. Which is why the ridiculously reverential wannabes are required to gasp about the wonder of it all. As if they’re worshipping at a temple. “It’s amazing… it hasn’t sunk in yet… to be a quarter finalist is surreal…” And so on and so forth.

The pretentiousness of the breathless hopefuls’ cuisine is hilarious. Our thanks to university professor Cae for this impressively complicated line up… Pan fried cod in lava bread butter over wasabi and soya mashed potato with cockle veloute and flambéed garlic Pernod prawns. Blimey.

Welcome to another helping of a rigidly formulaic show that never changes. Cooking doesn’t get more repetitive than this. But on to the next crucial ingredient… gurning Gregg’s probing interviews.

Shades of Frost-Nixon as TV’s baldest face-puller interrogated PE teacher Tom: “How do you combine PE teaching and food? Does it combine?” Before Tom had the chance to get his head round that killer question, Gregg hit him with: “How much do you love cooking, mate?”

Although it went without saying, Tom said it anyway and became the first to churn out the tiredest cliché in town: “Cooking means everything.” Yawn. And then the dreaded: “I don’t want to go home yet.” Naturally, he went home. Ta ta Tom.

Turning to 78 year-old Joe, Gregg ruthlessly enquired: “Do you fancy staying in the competition?” Amazingly, he did. Sadly, he didn’t stay long.

Talking of tricky questions, what exactly is the nature of Mr Wallace’s alleged expertise? He’s a fruit and veg man who likes his grub. A professional eater with a Mockney accent. While he says “Laarvly flyvers” we wait for authoritative Aussie John Torode to deliver the proper educated verdict.

But Gregg is peerlessly brilliant at shouting units of time. “Two minutes! You’ve got two minutes!” No one could do it better. That’s why he gets the big bucks.

As always, it’ll take about 4000 episodes before they name the winner. But good old MasterChef is a reliable warhorse and a recipe for ratings success. It’s passed the taste-test of time.