Happy-go-lucky Theo wasn’t always the fit, fun MasterChef Australia Back to Win contestant we see on our screens.
“I was very heavy when I was younger,” Theo, 39, tells TV WEEK. “I hurt my back very badly and had two prolapsed discs that pushed on nerves. I was in a lot of pain, and I couldn’t walk for two months.”
“I was depressed and I put on a lot of weight; I was 135 kilos when I was 19 years old.”
Theo healed, lost 45 kilos and began exercising and working as an electrician, following in the footsteps of his father, who had emigrated to Australia from Cyprus.
“It was a good job, but another part of me wanted to explore more,” he says.
While the money was good, it was just a job, rather than a passion. But then the fan-dubbed ‘Bread Boy’ found baking, which changed his life.
“I was really stuck, but, when I found bread, it saved my life,” Theo reveals. “I didn’t know what passion was before that. It gave me purpose.”
Chasing his dreams, Theo, then aged 33, packed up in Victoria and moved to Paris to work in a boulangerie, despite not speaking a word of French. He booked a flight home to Australia after eight months in the City of Love, when everything flipped on its head again. He met Laure, the woman who is now his fiancé.
He still caught the flight, but told Laure he was just popping home for Christmas.
“I wanted to propose from the moment I saw her,” he gushes. “I had booked my ticket home and then we had one date, and I thought: ‘No, I’ll stay and see how this goes.’”
Theo continues to follow his dreams – he is opening a bakery and thinking of doing a cookbook.
“The bakery is definitely happening,” he says. “And I would love to do a book… Around the World in 80 Breads, maybe!”
