Colin Fassnidge likes to joke that he and Manu Feildel are “basically a married couple without the sex, which is probably a married couple”. But the truth is, they really do have to get along with each other. Last year, in between My Kitchen Rules and Off The Grid With Colin And Manu, the two of them spent six months on the road together, away from their families.
“Our kids are teenagers – well, one of his is – and we’ve got the same sort of family things going on,” Colin tells TV WEEK. “And then we both work with stuff in mental health. So we talk about everything.
“I probably wouldn’t do it if he wasn’t doing it, to be perfectly honest.”
“We’re attached at the hip,” Manu adds. “We’re like two brothers, really, more than anything else.”
Their friendship has even survived Manu punching Colin in the head during filming of the second season of Off The Grid.
“He had organised a boxing match on our last shoot,” Colin explains. “He’s a very good boxer, and I am not. He managed to bring his boxing gloves in a box in his suitcase, so that tells you how planned ahead it was. And on the last day, we got into this ring – a miniature ring, so there was nowhere to go. And I clocked a massive one to the head.
“There was a quiet drive home in the car.”
But no hard feelings?
“I think I deserved it, to be perfectly honest,” Colin says, “because I like to niggle him.”
French-born chef Manu, 52, and Irish-born chef Colin, 53, met during the filming of My Kitchen Rules in 2013, when Colin joined as a guest judge. By that stage, Manu had already been fronting the show, alongside Pete Evans, for three seasons.
Over the years, Manu and Colin have seen a lot of drama around the dinner table, and there’s more coming up this season – a bit too much for Manu’s taste.
“It seems that that’s what people like to watch,” he says. “I don’t know why, frankly. I do this show because I love the food part of it – travelling around the country, meeting some nice people, getting some familial recipes… all of that is what I want. But unfortunately, people have to get their nails out and start scratching each other.”
“Manu’s getting grumpier as he gets old,” Colin comments. “We both are. But he’s more grumpy than me.”
Colin says he doesn’t mind if people argue around the table.
“But you better be able to back it up the next day when you cook.”
Every season there are confident home cooks who end up in tears when things go horribly wrong in the kitchen. Manu says there have been “hundreds… thousands” of times that he and Colin have wanted to help – a lot more than is shown on TV.
“Colin and I, we sneak into the kitchen often during the night, so we know where they’re at,” he says.
“A lot of the time they’re like a rabbit in the headlights,” Colin adds. “They start to panic and they don’t want to listen. But usually, when we’re in there, we’re trying to tell them what’s wrong.”
Both Manu and Colin started their cooking careers in the UK. Manu says his apprenticeship was “a lot harder than a cooking show”.
“It was brutal,” he remembers. “You had to be tough, and if you weren’t tough, you wouldn’t be succeeding.”
As for Colin, he says he’s seen “everything” in kitchens.
“One day I didn’t shave properly and they made me shave with a razor that they shaved the pigs with, and I had cuts on my face,” he remembers. “And I’ve seen people have breakdowns. I’ve seen a guy get stabbed, mid-service.”
Colin came to Australia in 1999, just wanting a holiday, but was invited to work at the legendary Sydney restaurant Banc.
“And the rest is history,” he adds.
Meanwhile, Manu, who also moved to Australia in 1999, was only looking for a job, and never expected a TV career.
“That’s all I wanted, to be a chef in someone’s restaurant, and I’ve done a lot more than that. I pinch myself on a daily basis.”
Of course, Manu isn’t the only in the family with a TV career. His wife Clarissa – mum to his daughter Charlee, while he also has son Jonti from a previous relationship – has been a food presenter on Better Homes And Gardens for the past three years, alongside Colin.
“Again, it was never something that was planned,” Manu adds. “But Channel Seven were looking for a female chef or cook for the show, and Colin was kind enough to put Clarissa forward.”
Colin says Clarissa is a better cook than Manu – “and me”.
“When Manu’s like, ‘Do you want to come for dinner?’ I’m like, ‘Who’s cooking?’ He’s like, ‘Clarissa.’ I’m like, ‘One hundred per cent.’ I would eat her food every day of the week.”
Colin, who’s dad to daughters Lily and Maeve with wife Jane, recently returned to Ireland for Better Homes And Gardens. He says he misses his parents, who still live there.
“You’re just a phone call away from bad news, really.”
But he has no plans to move back.
“When I fly back in from Ireland and see the Opera House, I’m like, ‘I’m home.’”
Meanwhile, Manu is so happy he made the decision to move countries nearly three decades ago.
“The best thing I’ve ever done is to come here to Australia, really, because it’s given me what I’ve got today,” he says.
So do the two of them plan to keep hosting My Kitchen Rules?
“Sometimes me and Manu go, ‘We’re going to retire,’” Colin says. “And I go, ‘Well, what would we do? We’d be bored.’”
Catch My Kitchen Rules on Monday and Tuesday at 7.30pm on Channel Seven or 7plus.
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