MATT PRESTON
Matt Preston is an award-winning food journalist, restaurant critic and television personality. He writes a national column for the Taste Section for all News Ltd’s metro papers. Best known as a judge and co-host on MasterChef Australia, Preston is also a senior editor for delicious and taste magazine.
Preston has now appeared in six series of the ratings success MasterChef Series as well as one series each of Celebrity MasterChef, Junior MasterChef, MasterChef Allstars. In 2013 he hosted the newest series in the franchise, MasterChef: The Professionals with Marco Pierre White, which was named Australia’s Best Reality Show in this year’s AACTA Awards.
MasterChef Australia and the Australian variants are shown in over 170 countries around the world from Venezuela and the Philippines to the Sudan, the UK and Scandinavia. With a total worldwide audience of over 180million MasterChef Australia is also the highest rating English speaking program in India with over 3 million viewers making Matt, George and Gary stars on the sub-continent.
Matt is active on social media and has a highly involved following of 170,000 fans on both Facebook and Twitter. Matt is also a keen tennis player but due to an extreme lack of talent he is extremely unlikely to ever win a wild card slot for the Australian Open.
OTHER MEDIA APPEARANCES
Over the years Matt has become a regular guest on all the major AM and FM radio networks in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth. He has pretty much appeared on every major breakfast show across the nation at least five times and in 2011 he had regular bi-weekly slot on ‘Kyle & Jackie O’ on 2Day FM.
Valued for his quick wit, sharp mind and warm radio personality, he has guest co-hosted on Today FM nationally with Fifi Box and Jules Lund, as well as with Triple M Sydney’s breakfast show ‘The Grill Team’ with Matty Johns and MG, with Chrissie Swann on Mix in Melbourne and numerous times on the ABC with the likes of Lindy Burns, Myf Warhust and Jon Faine.
Preston has twice appeared as a guest on the Australian talk show Rove, the game show Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? and more recently The Living Room. He has also been a guest panelist on Network Ten’s Before The Game, 7pm Project, Good News Week, The Circle, Breakfast, Studio 10 and Can of Worms.
Other appearances include the ABC’s The First Tuesday Book Club, Myf Warhurst’s Nice, SBS’s Blue List and ADBC, Channel 9′s Postcards and the Today Show, and Channel 7′s Absolutely Melbourne. He was also the “secret reviewer” on series one of Channel 7’s My Restaurant Rules.
Preston has been parodied twice on Chasers War on Everything, on Channel Nine’s The Footy Show and Hey Hey it’s Saturday Night.
Matt’s dramatic roles include guest appearances on the ABC’s Lowdown and Ten’s Offspring. He has also been a guest on the Travel Channel’s international series Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations and ITV’s StephenTompkinson’s Australian Ballooning Adventure.
CAREER CHRONOLOGY
In 2003, 2004 and 2006, Preston won Food Media Club of Australia awards for articles that appeared in the “Epicure” section of The Age, and in 2008 he won the title of “World’s Best Food Journalist” at the Le Cordon Bleu World Food Media Awards, for articles published in delicious and the Epicure section of The Age newspaper. During this period he also wrote for Vogue Entertaining + Travel, plus US food titles, Saveur and Food and Wine
For five years he was the National Chief Judge for Restaurant and Catering’s National Awards for Excellence. Preston was also the Creative Director of the Melbourne Food & Wine Festival from 2005-2009 as the Festival grew into the world’s biggest & most prestigious.
In 2009 Preston joined Gary Mehigan and George Calombaris as co-host and judge of MasterChef Australia, a reality television competition to find Australia’s best amateur chef. The finale of series 1 was the highest rated non-sports show in Australian TV history and the third most watched TV broadcast ever. Matt’s first book Cravat-A-Licious – a 420-page compilation of his “least worst writing” was also released that year alongside a questionable compilation album of very fine music to cook to and eat named Matt Preston – Music from another Platter. Matt was shortlisted for GQ’s Man of Style award.
2010 saw Preston and MasterChef nominated for three Logies in the categories of; Most Popular New Male Talent, Most Popular Reality TV Program, and The Graham Kennedy Award For Most Outstanding New Talent. Matt picked up The Graham Kennedy Award and MasterChef won the Most Popular Reality Show category.
That year, the show continued to grow. The MasterChef finale pulled another million viewers breaking all previously recorded TV records, these two MasterChef finales still stand as the two highest rating non-sports broadcasts in Australian TV history. A true phenomenon, research showed that in 2010, 75% of the Australian population watched at least five minutes of the series! Matt also won a GQ Man of the Year award.
In 2011, MasterChef won the Most Popular Reality Show Logie again and Matt collected his first Nickelodeon Kids Choice Award as Australia’s Most Awesome Oldie. He was also named on GQ’s list of the World’s 50 Most Stylish Men – one of only four Aussies accorded this honour.
It was a big year for the show as well, filming with the Dalai Lama, with five of the world’s greatest chefs including Rene Redzepi, Thomas Keller, Andoni Aduriz, Heston Blumenthal and Elena Arzak, and travelling to the New York to film under the Statue of Liberty and be the first TV show ever allowed to film in the UN’s hallowed General Assembly chamber. Matt also visited India as the guest of Star World, his visit making front page news in both Mumbai and Bangalore – twice.
2012 was a year of firsts with Preston delivering a hilarious rendition of the bedtime classic Go the F@#k to Sleep at the Famous Spiegeltent. In October Matt made his acting debut playing a policeman in the ABC comedy series Lowdown. November heralded the release of Matt’s first cookbook, Matt Preston’s 100 Best Recipes, published by Plum for Pan Macmillan which went on to become the second biggest selling cookbook by an Australian author that year eclipsed only by NewsLifeMedia stablemate Donna Hay.
At the start of 2013 Matt was honoured to be named A Legend of Food & Wine by Melbourne Food & Wine Festival joining an illustrious group that includes Stephanie Alexander, Michel Roux and Antonio Carluccio.
100 Best Recipes went into its third print run, a Dutch edition was published and a second cookbook Matt Preston’s Fast, Fresh And Unbelievably Delicious was released in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa again achieving best-selling status.
Then was guest role in Ten’s award-winning drama Offspring and the launch of MasterChef: The Professionals with Marco Pierre White. Consistently ranking in Network Ten’s top shows of 2013, the UK airing of the series on Watch saw an 85% audience increase over the previous occupant of that timeslot.
Matt was also an integral part of the Victorian Spring Racing carnival designing the menu for the Herald Sun Marquee and heading up the Pin and Win fundraising Campaign for Second Bite.
2014 has started with a bang with MasterChef Series 6 in production and MasterChef: The Professionals picking up an AACTA award for Best Reality Television series. Watch out for the National Portrait gallery exhibition Promo: Portraits from Primetime which features three photo’s of Matt.
There’s much, much more to come but you’ll have to keep watching this space to find out what!
Contact:
Henrie Stride
+61 402 440 125
henriestride@gmail.com