‘We’ve all the great ingredients to succeed’: We take you into the kitchen for the new season of Ready Steady Cook

The atmosphere on set is electric. Miguel Maestre is a perpetual motion machine, bouncing on the spot between segments, running down to the audience to hype them up, cracking jokes about his ‘fake’ accent, about how he is actually Michael from Bankstown, about how people in his neighbourhood yell out to “Magoo from The Voice”.

These are clearly running gags — a floor assistant offers up the same ‘Michael from Bankstown’ joke half an hour later to members of the audience, while Miguel’s mark on the studio floor is two pieces of criss-crossed masking tape with ‘Magoo’ written on it in marker pen.

I’m at Ten’s inner-Sydney headquarters, watching the filming of what will be episode 17 of the first series of Ready Steady Cook, one of a number of classic Australian variety shows being rebooted as part of Ten’s nostalgia-heavy production slate for 2024.