Colin Fassnidge addresses THAT Logies moment
Colin Fassnidge has confessed his ‘merry’ appearance at the Logie Awards because he “wasn’t drinking water! I was trying to numb the pain.”
Stellar
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When Colin Fassnidge turned 50 this month, there was plenty to celebrate: a successful career as a chef and television personality, and a happy home life with his wife and two daughters. But it also led the My Kitchen Rules star to appreciate simply being alive, given a recent health scare and the loss of his friend Jock Zonfrillo. As he invites Stellar into the family home, Fassnidge explains why he’s leaning on optimism: “It’s just great to be here”.
Evaluating how a dish tastes and critiquing cooks on how they have prepared and served it – that’s clearly the domain of Colin Fassnidge. Whether he’s running acclaimed gastro-pub restaurants, teaching masterclasses, writing cookbooks or hosting TV shows, the My Kitchen
Rules judge delights in sharing both his knowledge and his love of food.
But when it comes to social media, his daughters Lily, 14, and Maeve, 12, are the experts (and critics) in the house. “They’ll send me text messages from school going, ‘You are cringe! Take that down,’” Fassnidge tells Stellar with a mischievous chuckle at their responses to his TikTok posts.
Although the matter-of-fact Irish-Australian chef has never been afraid to say what he thinks – thus making him a great MKR judge since 2013 – he admits his candour has occasionally landed him in hot water. That’s why, with the help of the children and Jane Hyland, his wife of 17 years, Fassnidge is learning to stop and think before he acts. Whereas once he would have shared videos and photos of his children on impulse, he now seeks permission. “My wife has made me a bit more aware of it,” he concedes. “It’s all about consent now. You have to have a lot of these conversations, especially when you have girls.”
With that in mind, he and the family had a lot of discussions before coming together for their Stellar photo shoot. Maeve wasn’t keen to be photographed, despite her father’s best efforts to convince her that she would be contributing to the Fassnidge legacy “like the Kardashians, only we’d be the Karfassnidgens”. Eventually, she came around to the idea and even enjoyed herself.
“They picked out what they wanted to wear,” he explains. “They’re a lot more conscious now. We didn’t have social media [growing up], but for kids now, if they’re wearing the wrong thing, well, school can be a horrible place. I’m very aware of all that.”
Enthusiastic though he was for the Stellar shoot as a family activity, Fassnidge reveals it came after a particularly stressful time. While shooting MKR in New Zealand with co-host Manu Feildel, he began having persistent stomach pains. He ignored them at first, but then made an appointment. “My doctor is as blunt as a brick, and he said to me, ‘Oh, that could be bowel cancer,’” Fassnidge says. “I was like, ‘What the f*ck?’ He booked me in with a surgeon for a colonoscopy and gastroscopy.”
The results of the tests were negative, but Fassnidge is still in the process of figuring out what has been causing the pain, though he’s confident it will be manageable.
“But it was a scary two weeks,” he admits. “I didn’t tell anyone, but I was absolutely petrified. I remember being wheeled in on the trolley and people were saying, ‘I love the show’ and I was like, ‘This is not the time!’”
The whole experience, especially coming not long after the death of his friend, chef and MasterChef Australia star Jock Zonfrillo in April, has given him a new appreciation for life. To mark being given the all-clear from cancer, Fassnidge says, “The next day, I was putting up pictures of a sunrise [on Instagram] because I was out running going, how good is the world? I think it was because of the whole Jock thing, as well, because he was younger than me. It’s a wake-up call.”
Life-affirming posts weren’t really part of Fassnidge’s menu of talents until, at the height of the Covid pandemic, the chef began to embrace the virtual world. (“I’m actually now quite big on TikTok,” he boasts.) The social-media side hustles were important, Fassnidge says, because the climate hasn’t been hospitable to restaurateurs of late. The initial wave of customers dining out after peak Covid times has given way to yet another dry spell amid the soaring costs of living.
“It used to be sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll – now it’s the stress of empty kitchens that will kill you,” Fassnidge adds. “And you’d never bank your life on TV because that’s more trouble than a kitchen. One season they like you and the next, they don’t.”
He couldn’t even impress his daughters. “If my dad was on TV when I was a kid,
I would have told everyone,” Fassnidge says. “But I could be flicking through the channels, and I pop up, and they’ll say, ‘Turn that off.’”
That certainly seemed to be the case when they saw footage of his apparently tipsy performance at the Logie Awards ceremony on July 30, rolling their eyes and declaring it “disgraceful”. The chef admits it wasn’t his finest hour and, like many viewers, he was perplexed as to why two chefs – he and Poh Ling Yeow – were chosen to present the Most Outstanding News Coverage Or Public Affairs Report category.
“It’s a very serious award and I was like, ‘We’re not in the right lane here,’” he says, laughing that he’d also copped grief on Twitter for seeming “very merry” on the stage. “With good reason,” he adds. “I was sitting there until 9.45pm before I presented that award, and I wasn’t drinking water! I was trying to numb the pain.”
Joking aside, he says the highlight of the night was seeing MasterChef Australia win Most Popular Reality Program, which Fassnidge considered a fitting tribute to Zonfrillo. “We’re all friends,” he says. “The only ones who are rivals are the TV execs.”
Considering his mortality once more, Fassnidge admits he hadn’t been looking forward to his recent 50th birthday, saying he’d been led to believe it was a bit like “doomsday” as the date loomed on the horizon. But Hyland helped him to see sense. “She said, ‘I’ve been to your 30th, your 40th and now your 50th, and I’m looking forward to being there for your 60th, 70th and 80th, if I haven’t left you by then!’”
Fassnidge marked the milestone at a golf club in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs earlier this month. “At my 40th, I did my speech, and I was that pissed I don’t remember. I thought I was bulletproof,” he reflects. “Now I’ve got to 50 and me and my friends have been through so much together that there was a lot of hugging. It’s just great to be here.”
My Kitchen Rules season 13 premieres at 7.30pm on Monday, September 4, on the Seven Network and 7plus.
Originally published as Colin Fassnidge addresses THAT Logies moment
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