At the beginning of 2023 my dad died. He had an accident that he didn’t recover from and was gone a few days after. Thankfully I was able to return to the UK before that happened. After that, there were quite a number of weeks before his funeral. Mum and I found ourselves with a lot of empty time to fill. Naturally, TV filled that void. Easy to put something on and get lost in it. One particular show was MasterChef UK; I think we started with that year’s current series and then went backwards through the years. I don’t recall exactly how many seasons we watched—but it felt like a lot.

When you watch so many episodes in a short space of time, patterns start to emerge. Patterns become something to comment on, and before long it becomes a running joke. It boiled down to this (pun intended): contestants always seemed to be cooking either scallops, duck, or both, and at the end of a challenge they were either deflated or ecstatic.

In the same room, at the same time, you’d make a little quip and share a chuckle… perhaps even make some throwaway comment about the fact that there should be some MasterChef bingo. In different countries and different time zones, that isn’t as easy.

To try and maintain that little piece of fun, I decided to throw together a MasterChef bingo card that we could use and then refer back to when we spoke next.

Here it is: MasterChef Bingo!

It’s a nice, simple little thing: those bingo words, the ability to count them, and a few nice GIFs for starting and getting bingo. It even has the ability to name the card and keep a history of previous days.

I put that up back in October 2023, and we’ve used it for seasons of MasterChef UK and MasterChef: The Professionals ever since.

Simple. Fun.