Julie Goodwin, inaugural winner of the cooking/reality TV program MasterChef Australia, couldn't believe the reaction she received upon leaving the MasterChef house. In fact, until she stepped out of the house and tripped face-first into a buzz of post-show hype and media obligations, she didn't know the program had been popular at all.
Speaking last week to a roomful of religious media professionals at the 2009 Australasian Catholic Press Association (ACPA) Awards, Goodwin, a transcendent 'home cook', practising Catholic, wife and mother of three, said that from within the confines of the house, the contestants had no inkling of the runaway popularity of MasterChef Australia.
'On the surface of it, it shouldn't have worked,' she said. 'Not too many of us were your usual glamorous TV types. All the drama that is built around people sniping at each other was absent. The scathing remarks that reality TV judges usually deliver, didn't happen.
'It was a show not about the glamorous world of showbiz or fashion, but about the seemingly mundane, decidedly unglamorous and messy task of cooking. On paper, it shouldn't have worked at all. And yet, it did.'
Goodwin was humbled to later hear 'stories of children eating foods they have never tried before, teenagers exploring new career options, retired chefs returning to the game, and one three-year-old who carefully plated up the dog's food in its bowl'. But she also quickly discovered that there is a dark side of exposure to the public eye.
She 'made the mistake once' of reading one of the online discussion forums associated with the show. She 'didn't go back for seconds'.
'It seemed to me that in the middle of the night, in the privacy of their homes and with the protection of anonymity, certain people would vent their spleen about everyone and everything to do with the show. On the internet, opinions were stated as facts and the viciousness and the personal nature of some of the posts was staggering.'
More affronting was that some of these comments seemed to filter through into mainstream media. 'Certain journalists, and I am using the term loosely, drew on the forums for their material. Completely one-sided, non-verifiable and anonymous web posts were hauled off the internet and printed as newspaper articles.
'It disturbed me to think that this material could be presented to the newspaper reading public without the source being identifiable. I have always believed that if you