15 August 2023 , 18:59
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He is best known as that moustachioed bloke off the insurance adverts, but tonight Wynne Evans is hoping to show his other talents are beyond compare as he appears on Celebrity MasterChef.
The 51-year-old Welsh opera singer – once voted the most irritating man on television due to his partnership with the price comparison website Go Compare – has certainly seen some twists and turns in his career since becoming the tuxedoed ‘Gio Compario’ in 2009.
The tenor was working at the Royal Opera House when the opportunity arose and made him a famous face. He says: “The ads were absolutely life-changing. People in their 20s now have basically grown up with me. People feel incredibly nostalgic to the character, when they see me they’re like, ‘That’s the guy from my youth!’”
In 2012 he joined BBC Radio Wales as a presenter, establishing a fanbase of loyal listeners who kept him going in the pandemic and through his struggles with mental health sparked by the breakdown of his marriage in 2016. Wynne says: “You get real people talking about real things. And real people are really, really funny. I had a man come on in the middle of lockdown and he’d lost his leg to diabetes.
Wynne in Go Compare ad (REX/Shutterstock)“He goes, ‘The thing is, I haven’t lost enough weight to get a prosthetic leg, so I bought one off eBay. It’s come from America and it’s got one Nike trainer on it, a red one. And I’m wondering if anybody’s got a spare.’ The next thing I’m finding myself doing a shout-out for a left, red Nike trainer. And someone rings in and says, ‘I’ve got one, I’ll send it to him.’ And you’re thinking, this is mad.”
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Wynne – a long-time fan of MasterChef dating back to the days of Loyd Grossman – has been handy in the kitchen since his mum sent him to cookery classes as a boy. And he was looking forward to taking some home-grown ingredients along with him to the BBC kitchen to represent his Welsh roots – a pig he raised in a field near his home in West Wales. He reveals: “I named him Salt, because you’ve got Peppa Pig, and I wanted Salt Pig.”
But come time for Salt and his pals to “go on his holidays”, as Wynne euphemistically puts it, the creature fought hard. Wynne recalls: “I was up to my knees in slurry trying to catch this very strong pig, and I get him through the gate and the gate comes off its hinges.
Wynne on stage in 2010 (Alastair Muir/REX/Shutterstock)“Salt turns round, clocks it. He charges me and it knocks me backwards into the slurry, and I had to be dragged out and power-washed round the back of the pub. I didn’t feel too bad about making him into parma ham after that.”
Wynne is no doubt one of the more memorable contestants the show has ever seen. “I don’t have the edit button, sadly,” he smiles. “I’m pretty mischievous as well. At school I was the class clown. If there’s a joke to be done, I will do the joke.” Although he’s not convinced judges Gregg Wallace and John Torode appreciated his humour. “I’m not sure all my pranks went down brilliantly. But I had a good time.”
Appearing on the country's most famous cooking show has done wonders for Wynne’s street cred – especially in the eyes of his two children. The dad recalls: “When my son was little he said to me, ‘Dad, you’re brilliant and I’m glad you’re the GoCompare man, but sometimes I wish you were Gok Wan’. What I think he meant was I’m not very stylish. Kids are brutal. They’ve got absolutely no comeback now. If I had my time again I’d get more videos off Gregg and John saying, ‘Oh yes, this one’s brilliant’.”
With his Robinson Crusoe opera castmates in 1995 (Alex Lentati/ANL/REX/Shutterstock)If anything were to come of his Celebrity MasterChef appearance, “it would be to have a brand in a service station. And an ice cream van,” Wynne reveals. “Since I was five I’ve wanted to have an ice cream van,” he says. “When I was a little boy I used to save up all the spoons, ready for when I had my own business.”
And he has an unrequited love for motorway services. “If I ever went on Celebrity Mastermind, my specialist subject would be service stations,” he says, suddenly serious. "I don’t like the one in Taunton. The best ones are Gloucester [on the M5] and Tebay [M6 in Cumbria] because they’ve got farm shops. If you want to see the future, go there.”
As for dual services connected by a bridge, he believes they should be banned. “You go into a service station expecting a Waitrose and then you have to climb over a bridge to get to it?” he jokes. “That has totally spoiled it. Ruined it.” If opera was Wynne’s first love, food is a close second. Once famously corpulent, he has lost nearly six stone since September from a peak of 23st 6lbs, which he says helped with deep depression and anxiety after his marriage ending.
Cooking on Celebrity MasterChef (BBC /Shine TV)He got into juicing and used the app MyFitnessPal to track calories. “I did a lot of Peloton, although I’ve just had my bunions done so I’m not exercising at the moment, which is not working brilliantly for me,” he deadpans. “I’ve got five screws in each foot – they had to break every toe. I’m in quite a bit of pain with it, actually.”
Searing agony is something Wynne has already experienced, once again thanks to a request from one of his radio listeners. “This guy rang in to the show and said, ‘I’ve got cancer, is there any chance you could help me tick off something on my bucket list, and come get a tattoo with me before I die?’
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"And I said, ‘Yeah, why not.’ I took ages designing this tattoo. I wanted to get an oak with two little acorns on it to represent my children. “It’s only afterwards I’ve realised I’ve actually had the National Trust logo tattooed on my chest. All I need is a barcode and I’ll park free for life.”
* Celebrity MasterChef airs on Wednesday at 9pm on BBC1