Tears for peers as wannabe MasterChefs scramble for title

Hayley Marie Bilton has been given a place in MasterChef's top four and is seen here with judge Al Brown.

It’s end of the course for chefs who don’t fit TV3’s mould.

The fix is in. You know it, I know it. Everyone who watches this torrid, battered series of MasterChef NZ knows it's rigged.

It's the only rational conclusion to reach after the shock exits of the best two cooks on the show - Lily and Richard. Are the judges just the stooges of TV3?

Are they puppets, their strings twitched hither and thither by the unseen hand of Julie Christie?

Consider the evidence. Lily had to go because she talks like a robot. Richard had to go because he was too old.

The winner has to be engaging, smooth-skinned, Kiwi - sorry, Leo! The Filipino finalist doesn't stand a show.

There are four contestants left. They're all wonderful cooks. They're all neat people.

They'll all be at each other's throats as they take their cook-off to Dubai tonight.

Leo, though, is toast. He may as well serve it instead of whatever the judges require.

But he provided the series with a genuine moment of pathos last week. He was asked how he felt to be going to Dubai.

He collapsed in tears, overcome with the grief he felt for Richard, whom the judges and Christie had just sent home.

In another sensitive moment, Leo tried to comfort Glenda when she realised she'd mucked up one of the mousses Monday to make creme brulee a la Grecque.

She sobbed, she howled, she launched into a tear-stained soliloquy: "I'm so gutted. I've stuffed it. I've massacred it. F***! I'm going home."

There was more. "That's my life on a plate," she announced, as she served the judges her massacred brulee. "A little bit messy, a few things broken."

Glenda merely cried her a river. Hayley refilled the ocean.

Yes, more tears, again, for her dear old Nana, who passed away - five years ago.

Hayley mentioned in passing that she made her own dining table. Does she set a plate for Nana?

Richard's family made him cry, too. He blamed his parents for making him take an office job and killing his dreams to be a great chef.

He can shift the blame now to Al, Josh and Mark, the MasterChef judges.

Back to Cheviot, to work in his butcher shop, for the show's most spectacular and creative cook.

The show's greatest crime is that not enough people watched it.

It has suffered the bad publicity of one contestant being charged with drink-driving, allegedly, and one of the judges being the most boring man on New Zealand TV, definitely.

It's fixed and the judges ought to be ashamed of themselves, but it's fantastic TV and the end is nigh.