Grace Dent Shares Her Hated Job Before Fame as She Takes Over MasterChef from Gregg Wallace

From scrubbing toilets to being scalded with boiling hot tea water, Grace Dent has revealed the secret job she hated before finding fame.

The TV star, 51, who is known for her razor sharp restaurant critiques, said her career in food had a very unlikely beginning at Southwaite service station on the M6.

And speaking on the new Mercedes-Benz Vans Under the Bonnet podcast, she told how she had to grit her teeth while racking up food bills as an ’18-year old in an egg-stained uniform.’

She told host Scott Mills: ‘I’m going to let you into a secret, I worked at a service station. I worked at Southwaite service station on the M6.

‘Everybody in my sixth form used to try and work there part time. If you got the job, you had to do very early shifts. They would pick you up in a mini-bus just to make sure you got there.’

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‘They’d take you at about 5am, off down the M6, and disperse you to different parts of the service station. You never knew where you were going to go.

‘You could end up on the teapoint – where you stand and just make cups of tea all day, being splashed by scalding liquids, boiling water, all day.

‘Or you might be doing the tables. Or you might have to go and work in the shop. You were never on the same thing.

‘The worst job? Toting up the food bill at the till in the restaurant, because everybody started kicking off about the price.

‘As if you, this 18-year-old girl in an egg-stained uniform, got up that morning and made up the prices – as if I decided how much tea and scones would be.

‘People did really kick off. It felt like every single person that came to the till, I would go: ‘Four pounds, 95,’ and they’d go: ‘I’ve only had a cup of tea…”

In December it was revealed Grace would replace Gregg Wallace as a judge on BBC show MasterChef. 

It comes after Gregg stepped down from his role in November when a number of historical allegations were made about him. 

Speaking about her upcoming role on the show, Grace previously said: ‘I’ve been watching MasterChef since I was a girl sitting with my dad on the sofa. 

‘My whole family watches it. It’s all about uncovering and championing talent – and to have ended up in this position, is more than a dream to me.

‘I’m so excited that I can’t eat, which is severely detrimental to a restaurant critic. 

‘I feel very lucky to be stepping in for the next Celebrity MasterChef. I can’t wait to meet the fresh celebrity faces for 2025.’

I’m A Celebrity star Grace has appeared on MasterChef as a guest critic.

Not only that, she has also competed as a contestant on MasterChef: Battle Of The Critics. 

Speaking to Luxury London Living Fabric about her career with food, Grace said: ‘When I was a child in Carlisle in the ’70s and ’80s, we would put on The Good Food Show and we would see Jilly Goolden swooshing wine around her mouth and saying that it tasted like babbling brooks.

‘I think that what makes me different as a restaurant critic is that I certainly didn’t eat those types of food as a child.

‘I didn’t have that background. If you look at me and then look at the other restaurant critics, who I love very much, one of us is not like the others! 

‘I always say that it is an absolute fluke that I am in, doing what I do.’

Grace joined BBC Radio 2 Breakfast Show host Scott Mills to launch the Under the Bonnet podcast, the UK’s first podcast exclusively for van drivers.

The new series, recorded in a specially adapted Mercedes-Benz Sprinter van, has been launched to celebrate 30 years of the Sprinter and discuss findings from the Under the Bonnet report – which shows how van drivers have become a barometer for modern Britain.