BBC Two's popular food programme Great British Menu returns to screens with a brand new judging lineup.

Tom Kerridge, Nisha Katona and Ed Gamble will be judging the new series and Andi Oliver will host. 

The seventeenth series will begin on BBC Two on Tuesday, February 1 and welcome 32 chefs from eight different regions, all hoping to win the chance to cook a dish at a once in a lifetime banquet at Alexandra Palace, in North London.

Kerridge has previously taken part in the series, winning the main course rounds in 2010 and 2011 and returning as a mentor in 2012. 


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He said: “I’ve been involved with the show in some respect now for 12/13 years and I know how much it means, not just to the chefs that compete, but also the British food scene in general.

"It has been hugely influential, in terms of letting everybody know how great chefs and cooking is up and down the country, in all the nations and regions."

Nisha Katona is one of the UK's most successful food entrepreneurs and founder of Indian street food chain Mowgli. 

Katona said: “What's fantastic about the Great British Menu is it's not just a competition about food.

"It is about the very best chefs in the country, creating not just extraordinary dishes, but these real flights of fantasy. I know that having watched it in the past, these people pour their hearts into what they do and it's just a complete privilege to taste that.”

This year’s theme celebrates 100 Years of Great British Broadcasting. In 1922 the BBC took to the airwaves with a radio broadcast, which was the beginning of a remarkable change in British cultural life. 

Some of the most talented and skilled chefs from across the UK’s nations and regions will be tasked with cooking mouth-watering dishes which celebrate UK broadcasting across the decades, both on the BBC and other channels.

Extraordinary dishes will be created that pay homage to nostalgic comedies and entertainment, such as; Fawlty Towers, Morecambe and Wise, Dinner Ladies, The Crystal Maze, Blackadder Goes Forth and Monty Python, more recent entertainment juggernauts such as; I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here, Eastenders and Desert Island Discs, as well as landmark broadcast moments, like Winston Churchill’s famous speech broadcasting to the nation that ‘We are at War’ with Germany, and the 1969 Moon Landing.

Award-winning comedian Ed Gamble, host of popular podcast Off Menu, said: "Doing my food podcast for so long means that I am very qualified for this job and I know way more than Tom and Nisha who both kept complaining that nobody served chicken nuggets. (They might have edited that out).

"I can’t wait for people to see what the chefs have made this series - the brief is incredible and they really rose to the challenge. And I rose to my difficult challenge of stuffing my greedy face.”

Great British Menu will air on BBC Two at 8pm on Tuesday, February 1.