grumpyf1

Matt Campbell at the 2017 ASICS Windermere Marathon This Sunday will mark two weeks since Matt Campbell died whilst running the London Marathon. The talented Masterchef star was fundraising for Brathay Trust. When I wrote the piece about him last week, the incredible figure donated to his JustGiving page was £165,000. By Saturday, it has soared to £250,000, and on Sunday it passed £300,000. Remarkably, as I write this on Wednesday evening, the total looks set to exceed £350,000. With my colleagues from Brathay I did what so many others have done recently, and went out on Tuesday and completed 3.7 miles – the distance Matt was from the end of the London Marathon. Well over 30,000 people have donated, with many of them doing the same distance, running or walking – whichever they could manage. It has been a truly remarkable outpouring of love and generosity that, at times, has even had thick-skinned old me in tears, as I’ve monitored and responded to the thousands of social me...

Matt Campbell set out on the 26.2 mile course of the London Marathon last weekend, but he didn’t make it back. After collapsing less than four miles from the finishing line, Matt tragically died. The 29 year-old Cumbrian was a star of Masterchef, and also a committed supporter of the charity I work for, Brathay Trust. Matt’s family had already had to deal with the early death of his father, Martin, in 2016, who had also championed the charity. His ever-cheery support of our 10in10 (ten marathons in ten days) challenge saw him live and breathe the event from start to end, filming, editing and documenting the runners’ daily battles with the groundhog-day effects of running the same course and battling their increasing tiredness and injuries, to raise vital funds. Befriending all who took part, ‘Camera Dude’ was a big, and important, part of the event for the runners, and he left a huge void when he died. After his untimely death, Matt picked up that support of Brathay, running in...

TV posh-nosh-fest Masterchef is back on our screens, but whilst the C-List Celebs battle it out, I’ve been busy coming up with some much better culinary delights. Inspired (as I often am) by the brilliant advice of my Niecelet Rebecca, I have thrown caution to the wind, and whole-heartedly embraced the idea of alternative flavour-combinations in a way that only the mind of a nine-year-old usually can. Or maybe Heston Blumenthal. Rebecca concluded that a pizza that only had mango, pineapple, assorted other fruits and a few kinds of meat as toppings wasn’t really complete. The simple answer was chocolate buttons. Suddenly, it’s a taste sensation that would have Greg & John gushing enthusiastically about how Rebecca “has really taken cooking to another level”. Whilst adding chocolate to just about anything will inevitably make it better, this fusion between sweet shop and pizza parlour got me wondering what I could improve. In my small, twitter-based, universe it has been co...