The Rundown: Block boss savages claims contestants are enduring terrible living conditions
The boss of The Block has hit back at claims contestants are starving, freezing and living without toilet paper on the rural set.
Fiona Byrne
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The Block boss has hit back at claims contestants on this year’s show are enduring “inhumane” living conditions, are starving, freezing, exhausted and are suffering from a shortage of toilet paper.
Julian Cress, the executive producer of The Block, which this year is building rural mini estates in South Gisborne, described the claims, including that a female contestant had been in tears for three days, as surprising.
Cress said contestants had catering provided four days a week, had vouchers for the nearby Aldi supermarket and McDonalds, and were given $200 each per day as a living away from home expense.
“Scotty Cam cooks a barbecue feast for contestants twice a week; on Sunday’s contestants spend their days at HQ (in South Melbourne) for room reveals where there is fully catered breakfast, lunch and dinner, on another day of the week we have a challenge and on challenge day we have catering supplied,” Cress said.
“But if they get hungry at any other time they have vouchers from Aldi which is about six minutes drive which they can do in one of the two cars that are provided to them or they can go to the McDonalds at Gisborne and use their vouchers they have there.
“I am surprised that food is an issue for anybody. With all of those options you would be more worried about putting on weight, in fact two of my contestants thought it was funny when they read that story because they have put on three kilograms each since we started filming, so I am guessing they are not the source.”
Cress also poo poo-ed claims of a toilet paper shortage on set.
“I am pretty sure they sell that at Aldi or you could grab it from any of the 20 portaloos we have on site,” he said.
Cress noted one team “the ones that left” had raised a stink about dunny paper “but they did not complain there was not enough, just that it (what was available on set) was a bit scratchy.”
Cress said the health and welfare of contestants was taken seriously by the show.
“They are contacted weekly by people who are independent of the show offering support when needed,” he said.
“They are with our producers and camera teams every day from 6.30am until about 10pm at night, so I suspect if any of the contestants were in tears for three days one of us would have noticed. I am not saying nobody has cried in the first six weeks of this, there has been a lot of tears, but there always is.
“I am on site seven days a week. I think if someone was starving to death, dehydrated and in tears for three days I probably would have clocked that.
“We have had contestants ask us if they can go home and stay overnight and we have said yes, we have had contestants say ‘would you mind if I went home tonight to visit my dog’ and we have said yes. We know how hard this (show) is and we do whatever we can to support them to get through it.”
It was made abundantly clear to contestants during the casting process that conditions on this year’s show would be very tough and testing owing to its “green change” to the Macedon Shire.
“They are building a house in 12 weeks in a maximum of 12 degrees,” Cress said.
“Anyone who is here should have come into this with their eyes wide open.
“It can be brutal at times. When you wake up on a Monday morning to renovate for a week and you look out through the opening where you wished a window was and it is snowing, I am not going to pretend that makes the day ahead look easy, but I think most of these contestants are embracing this as an opportunity of a lifetime. I certainly believe it is and I think when they are finished 100 per cent of them will agree with me.”
MasterChef crowned multiple times over
Heston Blumenthal’s appearance in Melbourne last week coincided nicely with the filming of the grand final episode of the current season of MasterChef at its Melbourne Showgrounds HQ on Thursday.
Expect the grand finalists to have been put through the culinary hoops by Blumenthal with one of his mind bending, molecular gastronomy creations. His challenge is worthy of a grand final.
Blumenthal is the latest and last of an impressive roll call of star chefs to have filmed appearances for the show in Melbourne this year.
Fellow British chef Marco Pierre White is the featured guest chef on MasterChef this Thursday, June 2, and Sunday, June 5.
In the episodes, White teams up with Jock Zonfrillo in the MasterChef kitchen.
Zonfrillo was all too happy to spout off about his close relationship with the iconic UK food identity in his memoir Last Shot which was released last year.
White’s recollection of Zonfrillo’s younger days in his kitchen however was somewhat different when he was quoted in an entertaining feature in Good Weekend in last August.
Zonfrillo stood strongly by his recollections.
Channel 10 confirmed multiple endings of the grand final were filmed.
“MasterChef Australia has now wrapped filming on Fans & Favourites, and we look forward to seeing the winner crowned on air,” a 10 spokesman said.
“Multiple endings were recorded to ensure results are not spoilt for our audience.”
Australia’s got two years of talent
Finally, Australia’s Got Talent is up and running again after more than two years of delays because of the Covid pandemic.
The Channel 7 talent show will start filming its audition rounds in Rooty Hill in Sydney at the end of June.
Ricki-Lee Coulter will return as host.
While Kate Ritchie and Shane Jacobson will return as judges word is Neil Patrick Harris is unlikely to be available for the show.
The US star of stage and TV arrived in Sydney with his family last year and completed hotel quarantine only to have to turn around and go back to America after the pandemic shut down filming before even one episode had been shot.
That means there will be at least one new judge on the show.
As for Alesha Dixon, the other international judge, it is unknown if she is on the cards to return.
Is Kim K headed Down Under?
Kim Kardashian’s boyfriend Pete Davidson is coming to Australia to film a new movie based on a story conceived by former Secret Life of Us star Joel Edgerton.
The film is called Wizards! and will film in Queensland.
The screenplay, written by David Michôd of Animal Kingdom fame and based on a story by Michôd and Edgerton, follows the comical exploits of two hapless beach-bar operators, played by Davidson and Franz Rogowski, who run into trouble when they stumble across stolen loot. The big question for star spotters is will Kardashian follow her boyfriend down under?
Blind spot
• Who was the media person who caused a bit of concern when he turned up nude at the door of a colleague’s hotel room while on assignment? They must have been tired and emotional.
• Eyebrows were raised recently when someone who had been very quietly dumped by a network made an unexpected return to the small screen. The return was not missed by those in the know.
Kyle’s horror year continues at awards night
Kyle Sandilands has copped another blow, with his Kyle & Jackie O Show losing out in the radio industry’s top award race.
Poker ace sues Survivor producers over ‘debilitating’ injury
Australian poker star Jackie Glazier is suing the producers of the Channel 10 hit Australian Survivor after suffering a serious injury during a challenge on the show.