Interview With Mat Beyer After MasterChef Elimination on Why He Smuggled Phone Into Competition

After Mat Beyer’s elimination on MasterChef last night, we learned that the reason why he had smuggled a smartphone (a 32G iPhone 3GS, if you’re interested) was because he missed his girlfriend and was relying on her for support during a time when he felt “emotionally vulnerable.” Mat also revealed that his mum, Julie, is a missing person.

Matt Preston has said that the contestants are offered 24-hour access to a psychologist and have the limited contact with loved ones (a 10-minute phone call a week) reassessed when personal issues arise, but Mat told us that he didn’t approach the producers because “I’m a pretty private person, and I didn’t want it to be part of my storyline — you know how every year there’s some sort of sob story. I didn’t wanna be the guy with the missing mum.”

Keep reading for more from Mat . . .

Keeping the phone a secret for six weeks wasn’t hard as all it involved was “not using it in public,” but he told us that even he is clueless as to how production staff discovered his phone, saying, “No, I wish I knew. If anyone can just SMS me now or call me and let me know, or leave a comment on my blog, that’d be great.”

While the other contestants were oblivious to his possession of a phone, he opened up about his mother to Dani Venn and Danielle Dixon, who recently said that reports Mat had used the phone to access recipes were untrue. Mat understands that the emotional support he would’ve received from his girlfriend was an advantage over the others, saying, “At the end of the day I didn’t cheat, but I broke the rules and I totally regret that.” As for his exit from the MasterChef house, he revealed that he was able to say a proper goodbye to the contestants.

In regards to how he’ll be perceived from now on, he’s not worried about how the controversy will follow him in the future, saying, “It was a cooking show, you know, a cooking show, and I had a phone on a cooking show.” When asked about what things have been like since news broke of his booting in mid-June, he joked that aside from Today Tonight and A Current Affair, he has been racking up work experience hours in kitchens, doing some sommelier work, and writing for his blog. As for who will win the MasterChef title, he hopes Dani goes all the way, but thinks Hayden Quinn or Michael Weldon stand a good chance at taking out the title this year.

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