Christopher Biggins on Cooking With The Stars: "I kept getting shouted at!"

"I did, but I was rather angry about that! On the semi-finals of MasterChef, they asked us to cook something where the person who taught us how to make that recipe meant something to us. My Great Auntie Vi was a terrible snob, but she was a wonderful lady — she taught me how to cook sponge cakes and all sorts of things, and how to lay a table! She was very instrumental in my upbringing, and she taught me how to make a trifle, so for the semi-finals that's what I made — and they didn't make me a winner because they said it was far too easy, which I absolutely disagree with, because it was actually quite complicated! And when we'd finished filming, the crew scoffed it down within seconds..."

"Well, the awful thing is, as I'm getting older — which of course happens to all of us! — I now rely on my partner Neil, who does all the cooking. I used to love cooking, but I'm getting lazier about it, because it's all the preparation, then it's all the clearing up... Restaurants are a great temptation, but nowadays they're so expensive. You can't afford to go out and pay for a table of eight with great largesse, you now have to go Dutch!"

"Yes, for instance how to make fresh pasta — pasta sauces are very easy, but fresh pasta is quite complicated. Rosemary did teach me a lot, we had a wonderful day at her house in the country when I went and we cooked various things, and that was great fun. Her kitchen is an amazing place, as you can imagine! She's extremely fun, and wonderful to learn from — she took me around her village and showed me off to all the shops there!"

"I think there were a lot of people who desperately wanted to win. I won't name names, you'll find out as we go along! But I wasn't one of them, I just wanted to have fun — and have fun I certainly did. Rosemary was extremely competitive, she desperately wanted to win. She's never won before — and I'm not going to tell you what happened this year!"

"Katherine Ryan, the comedian, was absolutely fantastic, I really adored her — in fact I'm doing a season of shows up at the Edinburgh Festival, and she's coming up to do one of them, which is very exciting. Abbey Clancy and I absolutely fell in love, I've never met anyone quite so wonderful as her. Carol Vorderman has been a friend of mine for years and years, so it was a very good atmosphere on set. I love the fact that if you go out early, you don't actually leave the show, you stay there and comment on everybody else. That's much more fun — you're almost like, 'let me lose!', because it's just nice to sit there and watch!"

"It is quite pressured — I kept getting shouted at by Rosemary to do things, and I kept shouting back, 'I've done it!' We had a great rapport, quite an aggressive rapport together, because I knew what I was doing and she didn't think I was doing it fast enough!"

"It is! I think you need it when they say, 'you've got 20 minutes' and you start to panic. If you get to the final, you have to cook a three-course meal in a very short amount of time, and that is absolutely terrifying. I think everybody banged the gong in the final because they wanted to have the extra time to get it all done!"

"I think the best thing I learned is to keep your sense of humour, because cooking can get very serious. I remember years and years ago, I used to go to an American restaurant in Covent Garden called Joe Allen, and my whole attitude changed because I didn't just go there for the food, I went for the atmosphere. Food brings you all together — you have conversation, you laugh, you cry, extraordinary things happen. That's the wonder of food and eating, and I don't think we should forget that."

"[laughs] No — Neil is still my top chef!"