Babiche Martens
MKR co-hosts Manu Feildel and Colin Fassnidge love tucking into some rugged Kiwi adventure on Off The Grid With Colin And Manu, but how the show has tested their long-standing bromance depends which chef you ask!
“We just let go and enjoyed ourselves,” insists Manu.
“What you see is what you get – two mates travelling around the country and arguing on a daily basis because we’ve got our differences. We love and challenge each other.”
However, Colin adds, “Yeah, getting punched in the head on the last day in a boxing match was quite enjoyable! He didn’t say anything about that, did he? He’s like, ‘We all love each other! We’re all friends!’ Well, I think I’ve still got concussion!”
It was during some friendly chef-on-chef sparring at an Auckland community gym that things got a little out of hand. Manu, a keen boxing fan, trains there during his frequent visits to New Zealand. It was in the middle of one of those sessions that the offending fist was thrown.
Manu says, “It was supposed to be nice and friendly, but I just lost my…”
“Temper!” Colin interjects.
“He got grumpy. I’d opened some beers about two weeks before and it sprayed on him when he was cooking kingfish. He’s the sort of person who holds on to things for weeks.”
“Some people call it revenge,” shrugs Manu. “I call it karma.”
One thing the two Sydney-based chefs, both 52, do agree on is that season two of Off The Grid is a wild ride. There’s a helicopter flight across Fiordland, a kaimoana cook-up on Ninety Mile Beach and pig hunting on the banks of the Whanganui River.
Colin says the hunting episode is “great TV” but may be confronting for some.
“One way to conserve the environment is to kill these wild pigs because they root out the kiwi nests,” says Colin.
“They’re a problem and they must be gotten rid of, but there’s going to be blowback because it’s pretty full on! “They hunt them with dogs. In the end, we got one and you can’t shoot it because it’s in the forest with the dog, so you do it with a knife. Then we carried the boar out of the forest.”
It’s one of their many exhilarating Aotearoa adventures, which are also peppered with moments of real significance. This season takes them to a settlement near Ōhakune, where rangatahi gift them pounamu and teach them to farm, hunt and cook.
“We spent a day with these guys and they gave us new stones,” says Irish-born Colin.
“My stone had a sort of a weaving, which was Celtic. The guy said he was related to the Irish and his grandfather who passed on the stone to him was a cobbler. I started to tear up because my dad had a shoe shop and he’d fix them as well. They said to me the stone finds the person – I was just blown away.”
Behind the banter
Stillness is rare for the MKR pair, who are filming a new season of the hit cooking competition. Asked how it will compare to MasterChef, Manu looks puzzled.
“What’s MasterChef?” he asks, smiling.
“That’s the one where they all cry? They’re two different shows. They can be competitive, but one is very focused on the food and one’s focused on entertaining. Both shows have got a place on the screen and we’ve never compared ourselves, but we’ve been rating much better than them for years, so the proof is in the pudding!”
Finding calm in the chaos of filiming
As part of embracing the intensity of their filming schedules, both have a new practice they swear by.
“We swim in the ocean early in the morning, which is our new medicine,” shares Manu.
“When you’re busy, you forget about yourself a little bit, but the ocean is one of the things that remind us that we’re alive and it’s beautiful.”
Colin agrees, “We’re big into mental health because we’re at that age where we’ve just been working and working, then we stop and we’re like, ‘I need to look after myself.’ We talk and are very open about everything.”
Learning to manage pressure
Now they resolve conflict and stress with communication.
“Or he punches me in the face,” laughs Colin.
“Manu has a capsule in his head that stores ‘things Colin did to annoy me’. But we also have a little time apart as well. “Doing two shows together, we need a break, but then we end up having Christmas together with our families because our wives get on. We’re also going away to [food festival] Taste of Port Douglas and my daughter’s looking after his daughter.”
Both chefs love visiting New Zealand and like to boast they should have Kiwi passports by now, but for Manu, the dream may become a reality in his retirement.
“My wife and I are talking about the New Zealand path,” he grins.
“You can buy something beautiful, not be crowded and not have people jumping on you, and that’s what I’m looking forward to.”
Off The Grid With Colin And Manu screens 7.30pm Sundays on TVNZ 1 and streams on TVNZ+.
