Marco Pierre White at your service

“Marco got off the plane and said ‘When is the service challenge?’ because that’s what he loves,” Gary Mehigan explains whilst filming this week’s challenge.

“So we’re excited about it but the contestants were a bit nervous this morning. I think this will be a good indicator of how well they’re going.”

The arrival of ‘the enfant terrible’ has buoyed MasterChef Australia, with a million viewers on Sunday and Twitter trending. As personalities go, he knows how to turn it on for the cameras with his razor-sharp precision.

“The grandeur of the man. He’s the godfather. He was in my restaurant the other day and my chefs were shitting themselves,” says George Calombaris.

“I pinch myself often and say ‘How lucky are we to have a show where chefs of that standard and calibre want to be here?’ The Marcos, the Hestons, the Renes and Carluccios, the David Changs –the list goes on.”

On Wednesday night TEN’s series is already at it its Top 12 contestants for 2014. Two teams will have to cook a three course meal for diners at Melbourne’s Taxi Kitchen.

“They have to cook for 120 people with 2 hours to do their prep before service and then all hell will break loose,” Mehigan adds.

“But if Marco has his way he’ll want prep done in an hour and a half.”

A challenge episode involves a solid 12 hour day of production, but creatively it begins 2 months earlier with a big white board.

“We had to look at all the service challenges we did and make them harder because they’d watched all the other series and they thought they knew what they were in for, picking up all the little tips and tricks we’d handed out in the past,” says Mehigan.

“The challenge for them is trying to hang onto their aspirational side. Don’t forget that as amateurs they can go to the market and get some ingredients for a meal, but if they don’t get it right there are no real consequences.

“But what they think that they can do is often very different to the reality of what they can do.”

The three amigos -Mehigan, Calombaris and Matt Preston- remain big believers in the MasterChef brand, quick to reference the success of its many graduates, the international versions that have cloned its format and its track record at influencing Australian diners.

But in the television ratings game, it has been a rollercoaster, at up to 3.7m viewers in its first season to later episodes at half a million.

“On the street when you meet people they don’t think about ratings,” Mehigan defends. “They say ‘Wow that show is amazing!’ It’s only TV execs and press that read into ratings. It’s interesting that when we do (events like) the Food Show or the Great Escape, people look at MasterChef as an entity on its own. They’re not comparing it with anything else.

“My daughter is 13 and she doesn’t watch any live TV. She streams all the shows she’s watching. She’s choosing what she wants to watch on her iPad whenever she wants to watch it. If she misses Melbourne Housewives then she’ll watch it on Wednesday. That’s how it works.”

Fortunately for TEN there are plenty watching this year and -one Australian Story episode notwithstanding- the season has avoided the annual round of media knifing that has debated rigging, plating up, contestant welfare and promos.

In social media many have acknowledged the show restore to its core values, balanced with impressive cooking. Adding Marco Pierre White at this point of the competition is seemingly the icing on its cake.

But as the Top 10 looms, will the show be jetting off on its annual sojourn?

“Everything is a secret,” Mehigan quips.

“Maybe not,” adds Calombaris.

Masterchef airs 7:30pm Sunday – Thursday on TEN.