IT’S GOING TO get pretty hot in the kitchen for some amateur Irish cooks – RTE is preparing to film an Irish version of the hit BBC show MasterChef.

The judges in MasterChef Ireland are chef Dylan McGrath and maitre d’/restaurant owner Nick Munier. Neither are strangers to the camera – McGrath gained a bit of hot-tempered reputation in fly-on-the-wall series The Pressure Cooker and Munier appeared in the last two series of ITV’s Hell’s Kitchen with Marco Pierre White.

Still, they also have the tapes of the long-running British MasterChef to take notes from – and the regular hosts there, Greg Wallace and John Torode. (Or they could look at what Conrad Gallagher’s up to on TV3′s Head Chef at the moment. Or not.)

No1. Be dramatic - Greg Wallace is known for being more dramatic than the Dramatic Chipmunk about a mouthful of pudding:

No2. If you have to fight among yourselves, keep it civil – This is what counted as a “judges’ fight” on the celeb version of British MasterChef as John and Greg tried to decide between the woman off Loose Women, the bloke from Corrie and the girl from Steps:

No3. Always find something nice to say:

RTE said today that they are currently seeking applications from amateur chefs to take part in the show. Go to www.rte.ie/masterchef for more details or to The John Murray Show page on the RTE Radio site, which has a deal to pick two people to go directly to the audition stage. The overall prize is worth €25,000 and the closing date for applications is 27 April.