Even if My Kitchen Rules duo Caz and Fergus don’t win this week’s grand finale, they’ve already made history – by being the first mother and son team to make it to the show’s end!
After three gruelling months of cooking, the pair are confident they can dish up the win and nab the $100,000 prize money.
“We give it our all,” Caz, 52, tells New Idea.
The school principal first got the idea to ask her musician son to apply for MKR after seeing a photo of something Fergus had cooked.
“I said to him, ‘oh that looks amazing, maybe we should go on MKR’ and he goes, ‘oh yeah, cool’ … so I just went right ahead and filled out the application,” Caz explains.
Caz had previously applied for the show with her sister, but realised that appearing with her son might be more appealing to the show’s producers and casting team.
“I joked that my sister was probably holding me back, what with us just being two middle-aged women!” Caz says, chuckling. “To bring Fergus in probably added a little bit more of an interest factor.”
Although both are whizzes in the kitchen, Caz did not teach Fergus how to cook, admitting she “doesn’t know how he picked up his skills”.
She continues: “I’m a bit of a control freak … if I’m cooking, I prefer everyone to be out of my kitchen.”
Fergus, 25, confirms he “wasn’t allowed anywhere near the kitchen” growing up. Instead, he taught himself to cook when he moved out of home and into a share house. He wanted to “eat something decent” and soon became “passionate about cooking”.
Since Caz and Fergus arrived on MKR as gatecrashers, their family group chat “goes off every Monday and Tuesday”.
“They’re all very proud – they were so excited when we got on the show,” Caz says. She adds that “they always say nice things about us and our food”, and have never been critical.
“They’d say, ‘you didn’t deserve that score’ and we’d be like ‘yeah, we actually did!’” Fergus interjects with a laugh.
The pair believe they’ve cooked their way to the final by taking on board the feedback given by judges Colin Fassnidge and Manu Feildel. But Fergus also gives full credit to his mother’s creations, saying “she’s a genius” and that their success was down to a lot of her “know-how”.
An equally proud Caz shares that spending quality time with Fergus while filming the show has been a key highlight.
“I say to anyone who listens, there wouldn’t be too many [twenty-somethings] who’d want to hang out with their mum for three months on the road. That takes a lot of courage,” she says.
While the pair have now finished filming MKR, their love of cooking remains undimmed.
“I got home, and I was like, ‘I want to make pastry’ – it was nuts, you sort of can’t let it go,” Caz confesses.
Luckily for their extended family, Caz and Fergus are hosting Christmas this year. And their feast will have a touch of MKR to it…
“You better believe we’re giving them scorecards at the table,” says Fergus.
“They’d better be 10s all round, or there will be trouble!” adds Caz with a big smile.
