Tír Na HiFi

Nice one Andy. Well done. Kinda puts a new twist on toasting cables.....

Sean, you can watch this on RTE Player if you missed it.

I am now down to the last 9 in the competition, Thursday sees another very difficult set of challenges, I can't say how I did as we have finished filming and I am under contract with RTE to keep the result secret.

Hi Andy sorry to see you go, I hope the experience was worth the journey.
I enjoyed having someone to root for!

Watched tonight also. Sorry to see you go Andy. I think you were very right in your comments about getting out at the right time as from now on it becomes unreal. Fair play to you it is an incredibly hard thing to do and you did fantastic getting to that stage.

Well done Andy and hard luck too....I thought the judges were extremely harsh and that last dish was a tad difficult and not easy to remember. God help the rest of them from now on :) Won't be the same with you gone....

I was very surprised to see you go Andy, I honestly thought of (at least) 3 others who would have gone before you. It's an incredible achievement Andy and one you can be very proud of.

Andy, I'd Sky Plused the show so avoided this thread all day. Really sorry to see you go, can honestly say I didn't expect it at all based on previous episodes and on this episode. I've been an enormous fan of Mikey's food for some time, but I can't imagine having to cook it!

Was great to see you on the show, I'll miss you next week!

Diapason wrote: I've been an enormous fan of Mikey's food for some time, but I can't imagine having to cook it!

he's on my list to visit soon. Perhaps the work Xmas outing!

I was talking to a few customers here earlier about food/wine etc and Masterchef came up... they too were stunned that Andy was asked to leave. So there! I knew it wasn't just my own bias!

Thank you everyone for your kind messages and support through my time on MasterChef.

Having seen Thursdays show, I have to say that I am also a little surprised that I lost my apron. That may appear a strange thing to say but I was under the impression that our Lamb dish had not gone down well in the pop up restaurant, we were given absolutely no feedback on this before the Masterclass challenge. I therefore thought that this combined with my poor performance in the Masterclass had left the judges with no choice!

Now I know that the Lamb was a big success with the customers (Colm Hayes told me on my interview on RTE2FM on Friday that at least 60% of the customers said that the Lamb dish was their favourite out of the four courses) I think I was perhaps a little unlucky to lose my apron.

Anyway, at the time I was really pleased to leave as the pressure was immense and I don't think I could have taken another few days on set. You put your life on hold for the duration of your time on the show, you don't sleep or if you do you are dreaming of food and recipes, the days on set were sometimes 6am to 10.30pm, it was the toughest thing I have ever done!

I can sit back and relax now on Thursdays and see what I missed on the way to the final. I obviously know what the contestants had to do on their way to the final but it will be interesting to see how they coped and how I think I would have done if I was still in the competition.