Styling: Hope Lawrie. Zuu wears shirt, Stone Island at mrporter.com, T-shirt, Uniqlo. Photograph: Amelia Troubridge/The Observer
Big Zuu arrived at last year’s Bafta TV awards as the underdog. He’d been serving food to comedians on his cooking and chat show, Big Zuu’s Big Eats, since 2020. He talks to famous people about what they love to eat and then he knocks them up a three-course meal in his van, with the help of his best friends, Tubsey and Hyder. But the show was on its third season on Dave, and though it was one of the channel’s top performers, it still had a relatively small audience. It was up for best entertainment performance and best feature, against mainstream titans such as Graham Norton, Michael McIntyre, Alison Hammond and The Great British Sewing Bee. To Zuu’s obvious amazement, he won both categories. “Growing up, there wasn’t many chefs or people that look like me on telly,” he said, accepting his first award. “What? Doublé?“ he said, accepting the second.
Now, Big Zuu is everywhere. Big Eats is back with a revamped new location and non-comedy celebrities including Jonathan Ross, Alex Scott and Mo Farah. On the day we meet, he’s just launched a canned water brand, Drip. Every time I open Instagram, I get served another ad for a different brand with his face attached. “I do a lot of ads,” he says, sheepishly. He hosted his own ITV Sunday breakfast show. He’s done the rounds on Saturday Kitchen and Sunday Brunch, and ignited a good-natured Twitter beef with Michel Roux over a peach souffle, which Zuu called “very dead” on live TV. “He tweeted me afterwards! He said: ‘Cheeky.’ I was like, come on boy, you know it’s all love. I love Michel.” Recently, he appeared as a guest judge on Celebrity MasterChef.
