Tom Allen is surprisingly passionate about brunch – passionately against it.
‘Brunch is a lie,’ he tells me. ‘They don’t want you to know this but brunch is just an early lunch
with an egg on it.’
‘It’s this idea that maybe you’ll meet your friends for brunch, sit down at 11, but in reality, you’re
talking, as the waiters well know, you end up eating at about 12, which is lunchtime. People
need to wise up and realise brunch is just lunch – get over it.’
I’m speaking to Allen ahead of the return of his star-studded ITV reality series Cooking With The Stars, and his comic timing rarely slips. He’s consistently wise, punchy, funny and affable throughout, which, according to Allen, often comes as a surprise to strangers.
‘People think I’m going to be aloof or snooty, but if people ever say hello to me at a petrol station
or something, they’re often quite surprised, quite horrified even at how much I will stand there
talking to you.’
But it’s his charm that made the transition from comedy to television so successful, even if he’s had a relatively steady climb to get to presenting a primetime ITV show with TV’s top dog Emma Willis.
In 2005, he won the UK comedy award So You Think You’re Funny when he was still in the
embryonic stages of his comedy career.
Allen trained as an actor at the National Youth Theatre but fell into comedy when his friends encouraged him to do stand-up on a whim. He recalls thinking of his first stand-up show as more of a ‘stunt’ than anything, but it went surprisingly well.
Supporting the likes of Sarah Millican, Michael McIntyre and Romesh Ranganathan brought him firmly into the mainstream and he was swiftly snapped up for television, climbing the traditional comedy ranks through 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown and Live At The Apollo.
We’re talking during the biggest week of the year for television. The Great British Bake Off is back, with Nigella Lawson’s arrival marking a new chapter for the show, but Allen’s Extra Slice has been replaced by Seocnd Helpings with new hosts Jon Richardson and Judi Love.
And three nights earlier, his Cooking With The Stars co-host made her Strictly debut as host alongside comic Josh Widdecombe and Johannes Radebe. I ask if he was ever in the running to join her instead. At one point, he was tipped as the front-runner to take over from Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman.
‘No, I know other people were like talking about their auditions, but I wasn’t [approached],’ he
says.
‘But I was so proud of Emma, it was like she was born to do it. I thought she was just so
comfortable there, she’s so brilliant with people. I’m very lucky to have her in my life, she’s a
great friend.’
Together, they present Cooking With The Stars, which returns tomorrow night. For its sixth
series, the show has made some big changes – the line-up is bigger than before, and the episodes are cut down to 30 minutes. ‘The celebrities are being put through their paces more
quickly, and they have to remember what they’ve been taught in a more rapid-fire way.’
And it’s an impressively eclectic line-up, with the likes of Caroline Quentin, Joey Essex and
Happy Mondays’ maraca shaker Bez battling out in the kitchen with the help of some of the
world’s most esteemed chefs.
In the opening episode, there are even tears from Men Behaving Badly star Quentin.
‘Caroline is used to working under pressure but it just got the better of her,’ says Allen.
‘Sometimes you try and try, but it just doesn’t work out – it’s just that wall of frustration. But it was
surprising because I think I’ve always seen her as somebody who knows what she’s doing, and
we’re all taken aback by how emotional she was, but it’s just because she cared.’
Of course, I’m desperate to know how celebrity wrecking ball Bez, the man who hospitalised
himself by drinking tablespoons of bicarbonate of soda, fared in the kitchen.
‘I would say he’s a little chaotic, but no more chaotic than anybody else,’ Allen assures,
diplomatically. ‘I think everyone assumed because he’s from the music scene and the parties
that go with that, he wouldn’t be able to connect with the show, but he absolutely did, and
surprised everybody.’
In his autobiography No Shame, Allen opens with the line: ‘My name is Tom Allen and I have
always been 46 years old.’
Even as a child, he felt like a middle-aged man, an outsider among
his peers. I can’t imagine a single gay man who wouldn’t see themselves in his book of growing
up in suburban Britain during the early ’90s, even his unusual, and by his own admission
misguided tactic, of wearing Victorian clothing to distract from his sexuality.
‘The more I talk about my eccentricities and my weirdness, you find other weird people to
connect with, and then you realise actually there’s more of us than not,’ he says.
Now he’s actually reaching the age he felt as a child, he’s still not content.
‘I’m actually now an 87-year-old little old lady that wants everyone to calm down and be quiet.
‘I’m basically always feeling not quite right but I’ve learned there’s lots of us who feel like that, so you should just embrace it.’
Cooking With The Stars returns Monday at 7.30pm on ITV.