Joey Essex and Kellie Maloney sadly met their departure in the inaugural ‘semi-final’ of Celebrity Mastermind, primarily penalized for their atypical approach. The judges seemingly interpreted their efforts as too unconventional and nearly inedible.

You’d have thought Kellie Maloney for would be commended for taking the attitude: ‘I’m using my imagination!’

One could argue that pork paired with rice (infused with lemon) and tomato sauce (containing cherries) may not actually taste unpleasant. It’s often said you shouldn’t judge before sampling. Unfortunately for Kellie, John Torode and Gregg Wallace remained unimpressed both before and after tasting.

As for Joey Essex, he was also ‘taking a risk’ with ‘a little meal I’ve made up.’

Sadly, you suspected, not just Celebrity Masterchef, but the world wasn’t ready for ‘Stirotto’, as he called his invention of ‘stir fry in a risotto.’

You couldn’t help feeling the real losers were culinary creativity, human individuality, and the viewers as inevitably he joined Kellie leaving the competition while less entertaining contestants like Jenny Ryan, Neil Ruddock, and Dillion Whyte advanced instead.

And that the format of the show left a lot to be desired and had contributed to their demise.

After all, half of tonight’s ‘semi-final’ (the first of three bizarrely) was effectively pointless.

The eight celebrities found themselves on the white cliffs of Dover, split into two teams, cooking for 120 hungry coastguard staff and volunteers from the local search and rescue centre. 

But as the judges didn’t consider the result(s) at all, Kellie received no credit for marshalling Vicky Pattison, Greg Rutherford, and Dom Parker in the Blue Team to an easy victory.

And similarly Jenny Ryan’s Red Team (herself, Neil Ruddock, Dillion Whyte, and Joey Essex) weren’t penalized, despite serving their food 15 minutes late after filling their tent with black smoke when their lamb caught fire and several other mishaps.

‘I have never seen it so chaotic in all my life!’ cried John Torode, untroubled by the minor detail that it mattered not one jot.

To be fair to Dillion, Razor, and particularly Jenny, they fared far better back in the second half – back in the Masterchef kitchen with ‘the Invention Test’, unlike Joey Essex, who chose that as the occasion to unveil his ‘Stirotto.’

He had started the show in ominously optimistic spirits about being among ‘the best eight cooks’ to have made it to the semi-finals.

‘Eight’s my lucky number!’ he declared, dubiously and promising: ‘this is Joey Essex at his best. He’s going to come good!’

So not only talking about himself in the third person but having no logic whatsoever.

Looking at the ingredients in the Red Team’s tent, Joey lifted up a MASSIVE shoulder of lamb from the pile and asked: ‘what are these, chicken?’

‘Joey!’ cried Dillion Whyte, cracking up. ‘When have you seen a chicken this big?!’

Perhaps in the Jurassic age, or Essex.

Jenny then tasked him with trimming the Dover Soles (the fish dish that the Red Team were making for the coastguards – eventually).

‘I’m not the man for fish!’ he told her. ‘Me and fish don’t get on.’

He quickly complied though when Neil Ruddock showed him how easy it was and even revealed:

I worked in a salmon gutting factory once.’

‘Why were you complaining then?’ laughed Whyte, (not unreasonably).

‘I only worked there for one day and got sacked!’ smiled Joey (ditto).

With eight celebrities still remaining, the Invention Test required them to make one plate of food (sweet or savoury) using the ingredients leftover from their dishes for the coastguards.

‘I’m taking a risk. I’ve made up my own little meal!’

Joey told Torode and Wallace eagerly, and, it’s safe to say, not exaggerating.

The revelation that he was making stir fry risotto (‘stirotto’) was followed by the bombshell ‘I’ve never done a risotto before.’

As if to compounds this disaster he added: ‘I’m going to make it quite sticky so when you mix in the stir fry it all sticks together.’

Adding egg to the rice sealed it – in more ways than one.

For reasons best known to himself, as Joey walked up to John and Gregg to present them with the finished dish, he started rapping: ‘that’s a Stirotto/that’s my motto/that’s not dirty/that’s for certy…’

Incredibly, almost impressively, his cooking was even worse than his rapping.

The rice had ‘the texture of cold rice pudding’ and even the stir-fry’s most straightforward ingredient (the broccoli) was ‘greasy’, Gregg Wallace said, while the three whole mushrooms plonked on the top looked like huge black balls of dog poo.

Not ideal…

As for the concept of ‘Stirotto’ over-all, Gregg concluded with some under-statement: ‘I’ve never seen anybody do that before: boil it, add eggs, and mush it all up together!’

And never see it again hopefully.

Despite that – or rather because of it – you would have liked to see Joey Essex and Kellie Maloney go through.