Gregg Wallace is, to me, one of the stars of television. Genuinely. I love watching him. The man plays an active role in television’s first couple on Masterchef, and is the originator of the phrase: “Cooking… DOESN’T get tougher like this.” You can’t blame me for being really excited when I knew I’d got an interview with the man himself. However, things didn’t start auspiciously. After a quick greeting from me, Gregg asked me if I could ring back in five minutes because he’d just come out of the loo and his trousers were still around his ankles. That bit of reality cannot be bought, and from there on in I knew I was speaking to a fine man. And why was I speaking to such a fine man? It’s semi-final week of Masterchef, that’s why. Read Gregg’s very entertaining interview is after the jump, and you watch Masterchef every weeknight on BBC Two this week at 8.30pm (or from 8pm on a Thursday).

Related: Quote of the night: Gregg Wallace on MasterChef | Why I Love… John Torode and Gregg Wallace

TV Scoop: Can I take you back to when Masterchef was resurrected, what were the first things when you thought of Masterchef? And did you want to change things around?
Gregg Wallace: Firstly, the structure and the idea of the show had already been thought out by our boss, Karen Ross, who’s a very tough lady and got things absolutely right. She was very brave, and one of my first thoughts was: “Wow, that’s pretty much a middle class show.” It was for and featuring people in the Home Counties – Mr and Mrs Corby Trouser Press – making food with long names for dinner parties. I remember thinking that she had picked two very blue-collar boys here, and this would be very different. The show had also really moved on. The original show was huge – I used to watch it too – and it was a massive hit. But it only really proved that people could cook for dinner parties and that was it. If you said to somebody: “Right, if you’re coming onto the television in four months and you’re cooking two plates of food”, let’s face it who couldn’t do that? My granny could do that. But to actually get people in and say: “Here’s your ingredients, off you go” is a huge, HUGE difference.

TVS: That makes for a real competition right there…
GW: Aaaah, yes. That is BIG. It really had changed phenomenally.

TVS: As you settled into it, were you surprised how quickly the audience picked up on it?
GW: Oh my word. Still am. Still am. Oh my word. They just keep doing one after the other, and then they did Celebrity Masterchef as well. I did think, when we started to do Celebrity… “Oh no, can we not just go quietly about our business. We’re doing alright here. This might not work!” I’m a big worrier, and then when it does work it’s just wow. I do count myself extremely fortunate. Extremely fortunate. Talk about a lucky break. I just love it, and I hope it shows. Just love doing it.

TVS: Certainly does. Can we talk about your relationship with John? Did you know John before Masterchef?
GW: Yeah. Oh yeah. I’ve known John now for 20 years. I supplied John with fruit and veg, still do. I’m everybody’s green grocer. I supply fruit and veg to all the restaurants in London, and have done for years. Chefs in London call me Gregg The Veg. I’ve been doing it for a long time. What is interesting is that John and I were never what you’d call friends until Masterchef. He did business with me but we were never mates. We are now. It’s actually quite a phenomenal relationship we’ve got when you think about how much time we spend together.

TVS: Knowing a few bits and pieces about TV, it seems to me that you must do the shows in huge blocks. So I would imagine it is quite full-on for you two…
GW: We film for four or five months at a time, and we are up close and personal with each other every single day. You know if someone’s been out the night before, you can tell if one of us has had a bad morning. We are that close. But what we do have is a lot of respect for one another. A lot of respect. If you do interviews with us you’ll find that we tend not to talk over one another. We give each other a lot of space, and we don’t actually socialise that much. We don’t socialise. We do through work, and there’s a big table of all the crew you’ll find that I sit up at one end and John sits at the other end. We’ve just lately been away filming and John and I had dinner together. We shared a bottle of wine and that was really nice. I do count myself very lucky to be working with him, and it’s quite amazing how we get on. You talk to anybody – that’s not rubbish either. I know a lot of people who work together and don’t get on, but we really do.

TVS: And that shows. Another question I’ve always wanted to ask you… when you do the little monologues, how close are you actually to one another?
GW: I’ll tell you how close we are. He crosses his legs and his foot virtually touches his knee. I keep asking him to cross his legs the other way. He keeps saying, “I can’t, I can’t!” Torode and his big, dirty cowboy boots… always brushing up against my lovely clean jeans. That’s how close we are.

TVS: There was a point last year when Masterchef really entered the national consciousness. People everywhere were using “cooking doesn’t get tougher than this” as a catchphrase. That must be mad to you. Did you wilfully design the catchphrase?
GW: No, no I didn’t. I first realised when it was catching on when John and I were walking along by Tower Bridge, past a table of City guys, they shouted it out. I thought, “Hang on, what’s happening here?” And then it happened again. But that was from the only part of the show that’s scripted, the intro. I don’t know why that one stuck, because John doesn’t have any. The other one that has stuck is me and puddings. It’s nothing I set out to do. There’s one blog somewhere that asked, “can he not eat pudding without looking like someone’s tickling his testicles?”

TVS: What about your tasting style. You and John have very specific ways you taste foods…
GW: I put my head down and John doesn’t, so you get the view of the top of my head and not the open chasm of my gob. John stands up and proudly closes his jaw. That’s the difference between an Australian and an Englishman I suppose. I did have a lady come up to me at the train station and say to me: “I’ve worked you out. I’ve realised your poker face. The quality of the pudding is dependent on how long you keep the spoon in your mouth, and the speed of which I withdraw it.” She’d worked it out. I went back and looked at a few of the tapes and thought she might be right.

TVS: This year’s competition seems to have a very high standard.
GW: Although it’s nice to see the level of skill going up, it makes it very difficult from a judging point of view. Previously to this, we realised the standard was rising and just to be a competent cook was enough to get you through. Now it’s not. Skilful, knowledgeable cooks are turning up en masse. Now we’re looking slightly flamboyant, which was never what I was looking for before. That’s going to get harder for us. I’ve always been very conservative and told people not to experiment and just to get the basics right. That’s no longer good enough. But I’ve always said that if you’re going to experiment, there better be a bloody good reason. When there is that reason and he or she comes up with something I’ve never tasted before you’ve just got to take your hat off and give them a big bow.