Hell's Kitchen Reality Tv

I THINK all that heat must have gone to Caroline Garvey's head. Can she honestly say she didn't find Jean-Christophe Novelli the most delicious thing in Hell's Kitchen? "I really didn't," she insists. "But Gary he had a wonderful twinkle in his eye."

Gary Rhodes, the man shaped like a pastry brush, shouted at her constantly during the reality TV show, said her starters were "disgusting" and was generally so mean it was a wonder she did not walk out before she was evicted on Saturday night.

"I didn't mind him shouting at me," says Caroline. "He knew I could cope with it, that's why he did it. " Caroline was the first to be evicted from Rhodes's team. If you haven't watched the show, two teams headed by Rhodes and Novelli battle it out to be the best in the kitchen and contestants are voted off each night.

Eventually, one contestant will win.

"I was very disappointed to be voted off," she says. "I loved every minute of it. I didn't learn a great deal about cooking because it wasn't as though I couldn't cook, but what I learned was perfection."

Caroline looks a bit like Penelope Keith, with the vowels to match; her hair is blowdried and she is actually wearing pearls. At 54, she was older than the other contestants on her team and it was age, rather than class, that was divisive.

"They were all into each other and I don't think anyone was really interested in what I had to say. In the auditions, I was terrified of Terry [the no-nonsense Geordie caterer in her team] who was very bossy. I hoped he wouldn't get in, so you can imagine how horrified I was when I turned up on the first day and he was there. But actually, he turned out to be the most delightful man."

Caroline lives in a big house in Fulham, has been married to Simon for 33 years and has two grownup children - William, a lawyer, and Camilla, who works in corporate PR. A keen cook - the family spent 27 years in South Africa and she held dinner parties all the time - she failed to make it on Masterchef a few months ago for giggling too much.

It was a friend of her children, who worked for the Hell's Kitchen production company, who emailed Caroline to say she would be brilliant on the programme and that she should audition.

But there was another, more poignant, reason for Caroline's decision to take part. In the summer of 2003 she was diagnosed with breast cancer and, with her treatment finished, she had decided never to waste any opportunity to do something different.

She had had the lump in her breast removed and says that being in the waiting room, during her three weeks of radiotherapy treatment, was a big lesson for her. "I realised there were other people in a far worse situation than me. I couldn't complain that the pills were making my skin dry and giving me wrinkles - I'm still alive.

"I was treated at the Royal Marsden.

The nurses were wonderful and I had great faith in my doctors. I always took different underwear with me and all the nurses would want to know where it was from. Marks and Sparks! On my last day I burst into tears. I said, 'what am I going to do tomorrow?' I was terrified because my security blanket was taken away."

Caroline now has check-ups every three months and looks forward to being "cured". "I want people to realise there is life after cancer," she says. "It was a big shock for me and now I'm determined to do absolutely everything that I want."

She does voluntary work at the hospital, occasionally creates boardroom lunches and she hopes that Hell's Kitchen will lead to offers of television work, perhaps a cookery show.

"It's important that my age group is represented on television," she says.

"I've been given lots of challenges in life and I want to go on winning those challenges. It's bad form to be negative, life's too short. Go and enjoy it - I do."

. Hell's Kitchen is on ITV1 every night at 9pm. To make a donation to the Royal Marsden Cancer Campaign, visit www.royalmarsden.org/campaign or call 020 8770 0279.

(c)2005. Associated Newspapers Ltd.. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.

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