This is the eighth in our series of weekly blogs by food blogger Danny Kingston aka @FoodUrchin looking back on each heat of Great British Menu 2014.  

The last leg of the regional stages is now over and I am betting that prop makers and food stylists across the land can now breathe a sigh of relief. No more frantic phone calls in the dead of night asking for canteen cans and mess tins.

No more commissions for wooden ration boxes and poppy flower shaped plates. And no more intricate drawings sketched out on the back of a fag packet and sent in the post. It has impressed me actually the lengths some of the chefs have gone to in bringing their vision to the table. Some of the props have been amazing but I do wonder if there have been any mishaps along the way.

I can’t help thinking of that infamous scene in Spinal Tap, where David St Hubbins draws plans on the back of a napkin to recreate Stonehenge for a set and the polystyrene monoliths turn up standing 12 inches small, instead of 12 feet high. And all because the hapless guitarist got his measurements mixed up. Imagine that happening on the Great British Menu! How would David Kelman, head chef at Ellenborough Park, reacted if the rabbit hutches for his ‘Run Rarebit Run’ had turned up full size.

Oh I would have liked to have seen that. But that didn’t happen, so there we go. Yes, the last of the bunch battled it out last week, namely newcomer Andy Beaumont, seasoned veteran Mary Ann Gilchrist and the aforementioned David Kelman, all representing Wales with a vast array of bells and whistles. All hoping on this occasion to impress the formidable and imposing, Angela Hartnett.

I do feel for Angela sometimes, regarding this public perception or persona that seems to have been cultivated out of nowhere, that she is meant to be some kind of hard-nosed… you know what. I reckon she could be as sweet as a kitten once you get to know her. Nevertheless Angela still managed to reduce Mary Ann to quivering wreck when she entered the kitchen to introduce herself as this week’s mentor.

“I am petrified,” she quaked. But of course that must have been more nonsense for the camera because throughout the week Mary Ann showed that she could more than hold her own. Mary was (or is rather) quite the character and deserves a show of her own I reckon. Anyway, on with the starters and what did they do? Well, by the now the brief was well and truly worn thin as we saw yet another interpretation of a rabbit dish based upon that well known song.

David’s rabbit hutch, though small, was in my opinion an ungainly vessel to house his pie, rarebit and pickled vegetables and amounted to a bit too much style over substance. In turn, Andy’s ‘Tongue to Tail’ was downright phallic. It was a great idea to use cheaper, wartime cuts of meat such as oxtail and tongue but forming the ingredients in to cannelloni; well the dish amounted to a penis in a tin, with a scant scattering of veg.

Mary’s familiar sounding ‘Woolton Pie’ was uncomplicated, tasty and simple but uninspiring. I am glad that she pepped it up with parsley sauce on the day though, the sauce she made back at her restaurant resembled cat sick. The fish round was also a mixed bag, full of ambition, complexity and um sandwiches.

Andy’s remembrance sanger was a bizarre one and I couldn’t quite see where he was going with his wonky melba toast and sea bass effort. He seemed more concerned with getting a cup of tea most of the time to be honest. David, who was an army cadet FOR FIVE YEARS, came up with a very elaborate sounding dish called ‘Deadly Catch’ which comprised of sea bass, lobster, clams, mussels and squid ink jelly.

And everything seemed to be going so well (his potato net looked great) but alas he left his squid wobbly jelly on the hob for too long and they went and melted on him. Mary, gawd