Heat is on for show's finale - Daily Telegraph

MasterChef Kate Bracks with her children ahead of the final. Picture: Graham Schumann Source: The Sunday Telegraph

Under siege all year, MasterChef isn't beaten yet. Through '09 and '10, it rose to become the biggest show in Australian TV history and was thought to be impregnable.

But 2011 has been a different story.

Seven's Australia's Got Talent caused it trouble, beating it whenever the shows were head to head, and then Nine dusted off an old favourite - The Block - and hammered it.

Last Tuesday, AGT rated an average of 2.19 million, the highest rating non-sports show of the year, while MasterChef's biggest audience of the week was 1.7 million.

Over the week, The Block also narrowly out-rated it in weekly averages, which, considering MasterChef was in its second last week, would have been unthinkable a month ago.

However, finals week has always been when MasterChef has soared and the sole remaining NSW contestant, Kate Bracks of Orange, is not concerned about how many tune in -- she is just thrilled to have made the finals.

Bookmakers have her neck-and-neck in betting with Alana Lowes.

Bookmaker Tom Waterhouse says Bracks had been "a bit of a dark horse" and has had a huge swell of support in the last week.

Bracks, 36, and Lowes, 24, from Queensland, are now both at odds of $2.50 to win.

Overjoyed she has made the made the final four, Bracks, a former teacher, sees Lowes as presenting the stiffest competition.

"She has been consistently good throughout the show," Bracks said.

"She's definitely the one to beat."

The mother-of-three says the hardest thing for her while competing has been missing her family -- husband Luke, 39, a teacher, and children Erin, eight, Liam, six, and Maya, four.

"Luke has been brilliant. When I thought I wasn't able to keep going he was the one who said 'You can do it, it's not much longer'."

Vampire blood hits Bay

HE HAS the dark, brooding look that would be a perfect fit for the vampire series Twilight in which his older brother Xavier starred, but Benedict Samuel is sinking his teeth into a role at Summer Bay.

The 23-year-old has joined Seven's soap Home And Away in a guest role as bad-boy enforcer "Hammer" -- part of a gang rivalling the River Boys.

Hammer is a hard man who talks with his fists, called in to back up his brother when their gang ruffles the feathers of the River Boys.

"I come in to uphold his honour and stir up the Bay," said Samuel, whose scenes begin airing towards the end of August. "I'm hired muscle, which is kind of ironic since I'm the skinniest person you've ever met. There's a lot of pursed lips and steely looks."

Samuel graduated from the National Institute of Dramatic Art last year, three years after moving to Sydney to be closer to brother and fellow-actor Xavier, whose breakout role came as vampire Riley in the third instalment of the Twilight series, Eclipse, in 2009.

The pair are extremely close, with Samuel admitting he followed Xavier into acting.

"I was always interested and encouraged, but as a youngster, if he was going to be a landscaper, I suppose I would have been a landscaper too," he said. "He's my idol. My mentor. He's my big brother."

'Emduring' a naked truth

MORNING Show host Larry Emdur took the boss's directive to do a story on the Vegas strip a little too literally when he bared almost all with the cast of Australian male strip troupe Thunder Down Under while on assignment in the US.

Emdur admits performing live on stage with the buff boys from the all-male revue seemed like a good idea at the time "but when I took my shirt off it all went pear-shaped -- quite literally. I've never been so nervous in my un-six-packed life," he said.

Emdur is back on The Morning Show with co-host Kylie Gillies tomorrow, and says there's no chance he'll be jumping off stage and ripping his shirt open in front of screaming women again anytime soon. "It was an absolute hoot but I will never ever do it again," he said.

No doubt Gillies will be mightily relieved.

Doors open on The Block

BACK to The Block -- the first "open for inspections" for the completed houses is on today, with about 6000 punters expected to flood through the four renovated workers cottages in Melbourne ahead of them going under the hammer on August 20.

Meanwhile, Block creator Julian Cress and his wife Sarah Armstrong may be calling in the tradies themselves after their Sydney home suffered flooding and water damage during the city's recent week of heavy rain.

McCune's novel caper

LAST seen on the now-defunct Sea Patrol, actor Lisa McCune has a new project. She will have her first shot at movie producing after a feature film project called The Diary Of Jimmy Porter has received funding from Screen Australia.

McCune, who played Maggie Doyle on Blue Heelers, will join forces with producer Gus Howard for the film. Based on the Christine Harris book, The Diary Of Jimmy Porter will be set in the Outback in 1927.

Manu lost in translation

DATING reality show Dinner Date Australia debuted on Seven on Tuesday with a respectable 1.1 million viewers, but is absent from our screens this week as the Australia's Got Talent winner is announced.

Dinner Date's debut ratings may have been healthy, but some viewer comments online and via Twitter happily pilloried the performance of show presenter, chef and Dancing With The Stars winner Manu Feildel.

Indeed, Seven's favourite Frenchman's accent was difficult, and at times downright impossible, to understand. Thankfully, he simply introduces and closes the show. The rest is left to another faceless narrator. Perhaps the week off will give Seven the chance to throw in a few subtitles for Feildel.

Invaders boost designers

JAMIE Durie's Top Design is haemorrhaging viewers, pulling in just 691,000 at its third outing after debut figures of 1.1 million on Nine.

So the network will be hoping this week's addition of three new invader contestants will fire up the ratings. Karl, a hulk-sized furniture maker; Katrina, a mum trying to get her career back; and easygoing Chris certainly fired up the existing contestants.

Richard Clune is on leave