Fame, as they say, is a fickle beast. Anyone who watched this year’s I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! would’ve seen former MasterChef Australia judge George Calombaris open up about the “double-edged sword” that can be life in showbiz. When you’re given the rock star treatment, George said in the jungle, it can be hard to hang on to your ego. His former co-star Matt Preston says he, George and fellow judge Gary Mehigan always tried to keep each other in check.
“When you’re doing a show with two people you know, you’re pretty good at pulling each other’s heads back in when they start talking in the third person,” Matt, 64, tells TV WEEK.
And Matt says his family and friends have a way of bringing him back to earth should he ever carry on like the proverbial pork chop. “I’ve got three kids, a wife, a good friendship group, and all of those will go, ‘Mate, stop being a d–k,’” he says with a laugh.
Yet, there was a time during the heady MasterChef days when the judges needed a reality check.
“We all went into a lift and the lift wasn’t moving,” Matt says. “And then we all realised that none of us had pressed the button. We were so used to someone pressing the lift button for us.
“And it was like, ‘It’s time for us all to take a good, hard look at ourselves’.”
While Matt admits the level of fandom in India was more intense than Australia (“There was a bit of that squealing type of stuff,” he says), the public have, for the most part, been fairly normal around the food critic.
“People might say, ‘How’s it going, Matty, what’s going on?’ It’s like they’re bumping into the guy that runs the local servo.”
The idea of cravat-wearing Matt working in a petrol station might be amusing, but his latest TV foray sees him very much out of his comfort zone.
Season two of SBS series The Hospital: In the Deep End finds Matt scrubbing up at St Vincent’s Hospital in Melbourne. There’s definitely no place for egos in the acute geriatrics ward, where Matt was stationed. An overflow of patients is creating problems elsewhere.
“It’s a really tough situation when geriatric patients take over surgical beds,” he says.
For Matt, the issue of aged care is a personal one. His mother, Jennifer, was diagnosed with dementia, myeloma and Parkinson’s disease. She passed away in her sleep on Boxing Day, 2022, aged 89.
“With my mother, we kept her at home and that was amazing,” Matt says. “We had a couple of carers from the local council who were unbelievable. That’s the dream.”
Elsewhere in the series, Matt investigates whether advancements in neurology can prevent the number of deaths related to epilepsy. When he was in his 20s, Matt’s younger brother, William, died from SUDEP (Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy). Matt wrote about his brother in his 2023 book, Big Mouth, saying his family had become advocates for epilepsy research.
“We need to have a broader understanding of what it is and why it is,” he tells TV WEEK of the disease.
“And we probably need a whole swag more research, in terms of all those neurological areas. They tend to be underfunded.”
Of course, one other thing the series provided was that it gave the former MasterChef star a chance to see what hospital food is really like.
And his verdict?
“If it’s a choice between a new operating theatre or a better dinner, probably the decision should be the theatre, because we need to replace those hips,” he says. “However, you can’t go past the jelly and ice cream.”
The Hospital: In The Deep End premieres Thursday, March 5, 8.30pm on SBS and SBS On Demand
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