Lisa Appleton cooks up a storm

Aug 11 2007 by Peter Elson, Liverpool Daily Post

Branded a kitchen criminal, Warrington wonder woman Lisa Appleton wants to prove on TV she can beat her cookery gremlins. Peter Elson reports

WHEN your otherwise loving partner secretly signs you up for a reality television cookery boot camp, it’s probably an indication your talents don’t lie in the kitchen.

“Well, no,” admits Lisa, a former Gladiator games contestant. “I’m so busy doing other important things. I’ve no time for buying stuff, chopping and cooking meals.

“I’m interested in getting adrenaline highs with my fitness.”

The 39-year-old, 6ft tall, gorgeous pouting, Juicy-Tube-lip-glossed Amazonian beauty, who was a body-builder and model, is now a fitness instructor.

This Warrington wonder-woman and mother of one to 17-year-old Sophia, looks like she could eat the small screen’s original Lynda Carter version (a mere 5ft 9ins) for breakfast.

Now the goggle-box beckons for our Lisa, too.

A stint as a contestant on the worst cooks’ show Kitchen Criminals has given her a taste, if not for cooking, then for telly.

Certainly nobody could possibly overlook her today, as her superabundant attributes are showcased in a clinging, pink lamé, ankle-length dress.

Fully-made up and towering above me in three inch heels, she explains she’s not wearing her really big heels. Neither is she backward at coming forward.

“I gave that to Mario last night,” she explains, brandishing an encrusted mush of indeterminate parentage, which has a slightly other-worldly glow to it. You know, like Chernobyl.

This is her signature dish of tuna bake, concocted by pouring boiling water onto a tin of tuna and a packet of powdered potato. I think she takes the tuna out of the tin first.

This dish, evidence of her culinary incompetence, is identical to the one that earned her “the worst of the worst chefs” title when she met BBC producers at Tatton Park.

And this was only at the audition stage, when she trounced thousands of other walking culinary disaster area hopefuls.

One false move in producing anything remotely edible and you’d be out of the audition faster than a foot and mouth virus leaking from a government lab.

Boyfriend Mario Marconi, a business manager, who is responsible for launching her telly career, dramatically rolls his big eyes. Whether this is a natural gesture or an uncontrollable side-effect of the tuna bake is uncertain.

This tuna bake could be the metaphorical stepping stone to a lengthy career in reality television. In fact, it looks tough enough to be real stepping stone.

The programme aims to prove that even “kitchen criminals” can be turned into decent cooks.

“I saw this advert on the internet and it said ‘Do you know people who cannot cook and are useless in the kitchen? Do you want an opportunity to turn it around? Then send them on a cookery boot camp’,” says Mario.

“I thought that’s Lisa. She’s an incredibly determined character and really lovely, but she can’t cook to save her life. She just needs the discipline.

“As we eat out always, I asked if she wanted to learn to cook on television. I left out the bit about the boot camp, obviously.”

Lisa says: “Finding out about the boot camp was a bit of a shock, as you got up at 5am and worked from 7am to 7pm each day for two weeks. Basically I’m not a morning person.”

Obviously. However, she opens this BBC Two series on Monday with her wham-bam, larger than life personality, overseen by top chefs John Burton Race and Angela Hartnett. Hartnett is head chef at Gordon Ramsey’s restaurant The Connaught, having also launched the fiery Scot’s Dubai and Florida restaurants.

Although contractually gagged, she lasted the course longer than most of her fellow hopeless haute cuisiners, who were remorselessly weeded out during the fortnight.

“When we were cooking, right, this woman, Angela Hartnett, who is in charge says to me: ‘You can’t wear all that make-up in the kitchen’.

“I was shocked, I says to her, ‘Nigella Lawson is glamorous in the kitchen, so why can’t I be? Besides, it’s all tattooed on, so there’s nowt you can do about it’.

“They were just picking on me. Wanted me to tie my hair back, but didn’t say that to the other girls. Or criticise their make-up.”

Lisa was wearing so much perfume that worried production crew warned she would be officially be constituted as a serious fire hazard while attempting to flambé.

It probably didn’t help that John Burton Race, when reviewing the audition dishes, took a deeply disgusted look at Lisa’s tuna bake.

He witheringly said: “I wouldn’t let anyone eat this over my dead body. It’s a bowl of slop.”

Understandably, Lisa was not only hurt, but infuriated by such unprofessionalism from a so-called award-winning expert, supposedly there to help her.

She recalls: “So I says to him: ‘You’ve not even bothered tasting it. There’s no preservatives, additives or colouring in it’. Then I pushed his head into the dish. He deserved it.

“He was very surprised and didn’t say anything. The producer and crew laughed a lot, though.

“That’s probably why he started picking on me. He said I’d get right up his nose.

“Before, he was going round boasting ‘Oh, I had an £80 bottle of wine last night’.

“Well, he got right up my nose. ”

Mario rolls his eyes again.

Two aspects spring to mind.

One is that if Lisa decides to push you head into a bowl of mush it’s probably best just to go with the flow.

The other is that the producer must have felt he’d stumbled upon reality TV gold-dust.

“Then there was trouble with the blind-testing as I had my big false eyelashes on and I says to him: ‘Watch what you’re doing with that blind-fold’.

“They said to us bring your aprons. I was shocked ‘Apron?’ I mean, I don’t have an apron.

“They wanted us to wear these awful white things.

“I told them, there’s no way I’m not wearing my glamorous tops and lingerie.

“The pressure filming was so great that some people actually got worse. But I’m very competitive and thought I’m going to crack this.

“It didn’t help when I said things like I’ve made some profitable rolls,” says Lisa.

“You’d be famous one day if you could make profitable rolls,” chips in Mario.

“Right, but I’ve learned that everything from supermarkets is false, and me, I’m totally organic now. I have my weekly Michelin attempt.

“But some of the things I’ve told Mario I’ve made myself, I actually bought at Marks & Spencer. They’re really good. Top tip for the busy housewife that.”

Mario rolls his eyes once more.

* KITCHEN Criminals, BBC Two, Monday, 6.30-7pm.

peter.elson@dailypost.co.uk