When a nervous Miguel Maestre walked onto the set of Ready Steady Cook, his first solo hosting role, the celebrity chef found comfort in spying a familiar face.
“Amanda [Keller] was one of the celebrities on the show recently,” Miguel, 44, tells TV WEEK. “It was so fun. I almost got a bit emotional when I saw her in the same studio we used to film The Living Room in. It was such a good feeling – we have a great friendship.”
(Image: Phillip Castleton)
The ebullient Spanish-born chef with a passion for food and a zest for life is loving his new gig as host of the revamped cooking series, which originally ran from 2005 to 2013. The show sees members of the public paired with well-known chefs and TV personalities, who then race against the clock to deliver a meal tastier than their rivals’.
“If someone was going to design a TV show for me to host, then this is perfect,” Miguel says. “There’s no preparation, the chefs have never seen the ingredients and there are no judges – the audience is the judge, and they get so involved. I love the spontaneity of the show; it has a fantastic energy.”
Miguel, who was raised in Murcia in south-eastern Spain and moved to Australia in 2004, has worked in some of the top restaurants in the country, as well as opened his own restaurant, El Toro Loco (“The Crazy Bull”). But it was his role as co-host of TV WEEK Logie Award-winning lifestyle program The Living Room, alongside Amanda Keller, Barry Du Bois and Dr Chris Brown, that catapulted him to fame.
“I did the show for 11 years,” Miguel says. “Claudia [his daughter] wasn’t even born when I began [preparing for the role]. I still talk to my co-hosts all the time. I can’t wait to see Chris host Dancing With The Stars this year; Barry is doing a great job focusing on his mental health charities, and Amanda is a great friend and mentor to me.”
(Image: Supplied)
Barry was diagnosed with a rare form of blood cancer in 2010, which later developed into myeloma, an incurable type of blood cancer, in 2017.
“Barry is so inspirational,” Miguel says. “He’s not one to feel sorry for himself. He never complains and has the strength of a mountain. His positivity is probably the secret to why he’s looking so well. I mean, he lost all his hair and now it’s grown back – and it looks better than mine!”
While Miguel admits that learning of Barry’s diagnosis was “scary”, the manner in which his friend handled it, and his work as an ambassador for the Leukaemia Foundation and mental health charity R U OK?, inspired his own charity work.
In 2020, he won the sixth season of I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here!, along with $100,000 for his chosen charity, which was also R U OK?
“Winning was a rollercoaster ride of emotion,” he recalls. “I raised that money in the name of suicide prevention for chefs, because I’ve lost friends to suicide. The [restaurant] kitchen is a high-stress environment, where men want to be tough, and vulnerability isn’t a thing. A lot of my friends didn’t survive the industry, so when I won that money, I felt like they were watching me – and I did it for them.”
Everything Miguel does in life is to try something new and “add a bit of flavour”, so spending 30 days in the South African jungle filming the hit reality series was a no-brainer. Yet there was an additional challenge: he had to leave behind his wife Sascha Newport and their daughter Claudia, 12, and son Morgan, nine.
“I’m extremely family oriented, so being away from my family was the hardest part,” Miguel explains. “I missed them a lot, but I tried to keep relaxed. And I discovered new layers to my personality – I think Australia got to know me a bit better, because in the jungle you can’t hide, and they see you for who you are.”
Miguel, who says he tries to do “one act of kindness a day” out of gratitude for all the good things in his life, chuckles that his young daughter seems to be following in Dad’s footsteps.
“Claudia chose to do a cookbook for her school project,” he says. “She did all the recipes, which took months. I wanted to help her as much as I could, but she was a bit of a head chef in the kitchen. We’re too similar, we clashed, and I can confirm that there is such a thing as too many cooks in the kitchen.”
(Image: Phillip Castleton)
Miguel also likes to keep fit and healthy. He’s lost 20 kilograms in recent years and views being fit as a priority.
“I’m 44 now and I’m stronger and fitter than when I was 30,” he says. “I like to tell people your body isn’t free – you have to pay rent for it. The way you eat, the way you treat your mind, is very important.”
Miguel is grateful that his career means he gets to share his love of food with the world, but his goals for the future aren’t necessarily related to his successful career.
“My goal is to be a great father and husband,” he says. “I’m not fascinated by materialistic things or achievements. I always tell my kids to do the right thing, as my beautiful parents taught me. I want my kids to look at me the way I look at my parents. I just want to be a little bit better for all of them every day.”
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