Channel 7
He knows what it’s like to be tortured in the kitchen
Colin cut his teeth in the hard-core kitchens of Britain, Ireland and Europe in the 80s and 90s – where pots were known to fly, and tempers frayed. “Imagine getting told you’re doing something wrong for f—ing 16 hours all day,” Fassnidge has said of his first jobs in kitchens. He’s also said he had something akin to PTSD after starting his kitchen apprenticeship – ouch!
MEET MKR’S FRIENDLY PIRATE:
Having kids changed him
Fassnidge is the first to admit his reputation as a Head Chef hasn’t always been amazing. “I burned through so many staff,” he told The Good Food Guide in an interview. “I was known as a hard chef in Sydney. And then one day I turned around and no one would work for me. Like, f—ing no one.” Around this time, TV had come calling – he’d done guest stints on MKR – and he had his two girls.
He says becoming a dad made him reassess his priorities, and he began to look at doing TV more as a means of being around for his two daughters more. “You get tunnel vision sometimes and get stale,” he told Sunday Style in 2016. “They showed me there’s more to life than cooking. There’s poo, there’s crying, there’s no sleep. And the less I worried, the more awards I got.”
Everyone in his family has curly hair
Yep – Colin, his wife Jane and their two kids – Maeve and Lily – all have curly locks. “It’s curly and it goes frizzy, so you have to put stuff in it,” he told Sunday Style of his famed locks. “I do wash my hair, but I work in a kitchen and I gel it back. This is how far I’ve come in life — people talking about my hair.” Both Jane and Colin hail from Ireland, but didn’t meet until Colin moved to Australia in 1999 – they look more like brother and sister, than husband and wife!
He’s worked for one of the most famous chefs in the world
Fassnidge went to work for renowned British chef Raymond Blanc after his mentor Kevin Thornton got him a job with the famed chef. He did his apprenticeship at Blanc’s Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons. “That was like a prison camp; it was hardcore,” he says. “I’d never seen anything like it. There were 35 chefs in the kitchen and we worked from 7.30am until one in the morning. No breaks.”
He’s a rev head!
Colin rides a Ducati motorbike – and is a passionate rider.
He’s had to call the police on online trolls
In 2015, Fassnidge went to the police after threats were made against his children. He’s learnt to block the negative comments, but still prefers to keep his kids away from the spotlight as much as possible.
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