In dreams food signifies often wealth and prosperity but all it did for Richard Blackwood was give him Celebrity MasterChef nightmares.
As he slept, the actor would painstakingly toil over the hob, adding a pinch of salt here, a dash of sauce there. However, every time he came to try his dream creations it would turn out to be disgusting and foul tasting.
"You never would have thought that cooking food could turn into a nightmare, but it really does," says the actor.
"It’s tough. You have sleepless nights, dreaming about dishes that you’ve made or that you want to make. Then whatever the food was, it wasn’t even edible. It was like literally, you just don’t stop thinking about food."
Thankfully, the reality on tomorrow night's (August 25) Celebrity MasterChef quarter final alongside ex footballer Jimmy Bullard and actress Lesley Joseph is going to be nothing like as bad.
But the fact that Richard, 50, was dreaming about recipes during his stint on the show, is indicative of his attitude to life. The multi-hyphenated performer - presenter, comedian, actor and reality star - throws himself into any role he is given. In fact his motto is, "train for the role you haven’t got yet."
Aside from his current part as Felix Westwood in Hollyoaks, he also played Vincent Hubbard in EastEnders from 2015 to 2018. The Hackney-born star is somewhat of a showbiz veteran, as he bagged his own show, eponymously named The Richard Blackwood Show, back in the early noughties and is also a successful stand-up comic.
However, despite all this experience he still found MasterChef extremely nerve-racking.
"When they asked me to do it, I said yes apprehensively," he explains. "It felt like doing it was like a rite of passage. I was trying to cook a lot more before during the show once I knew I was doing it. But I guess, preparing for MasterChef is like preparing for a quiz where it is general knowledge questions; you don’t know where they going to go. No matter how much you might study geography, or you might study history, they might go there, well, the special subject is horror movies."
But Richard won’t be adding professional chef to his cannon of careers any time soon, as he loves his current job on Hollyoaks - and his ultimate aim still is to star in Hollywood films.
"People like Will Smith and Eddie Murphy have always been my idols. Eddie Murphy first, Richard Pryor before. I’m showing my age, but l that’s always been my dream, and I know it will come to fruition."
This is despite turning 50 last May, a landmark which hasn’t affected him in any way, perhaps because he still looks a good decade younger.
"I’ve never been afraid of age, I embrace age," he says. "I know how I got to 50. I live stress free. You know, I train, I do Muay Thai, I don’t drink and I look after myself."
At odds with the actors positive and friendly demeanour, is the antagonistic characters he plays. "I played the villain in EastEnders, and I play a villain Hollyoaks. But you know, anybody that knows me, I’m the funny guy, I’m the one that makes everybody laugh. Even on set, we making the other actors laugh when it’s time for them to be dead serious.
"There’s a buzz in that there’s something quite gratifying and seeing you play a character that’s so the opposite of you had people then start to even ask you, ‘are you like that?’."
Aside from playing DeMarcus Westwood’s dad on the hit soap, Richard is also father to 21-year-old Keaun in real life. "I sound like I’m biased, but anybody that meets him, says he’s such a good boy because he’s just so chilled. He’s overly polite. He has lyrical discourses of a high level because I made him learn the dictionary from A to Z."
After being told at a school parents evening when Keaun was eight that he was behind in English, Richard made sure he did five words a day from the dictionary, every day. "If you hear the way he speaks, his diction is perfect, and I’m very proud of that. Because as a young black man growing up, it’s easy for people to look at you as stereotype.
"People that are naïve will see a tracksuit and think he probably goes ‘Wagwan, blah, blah, blah.’ But when you hear him speak, he’s very articulate... My thing is, I’m going to make sure we kill the stereotype by arming you with these weapons."
To see Richard talking to the Mirror’s Jess Saying columnist Jessica Boulton click here.
Celebrity MasterChef returns tomorrow night at 9pm on BBC One.
