For many of us, getting to go on a show we've admired and have watched since childhood is only a pipe dream and one far reaching. But for Owen Vaughan, a chef from Barmouth, it was one he was determined to make happen - and now it has come true as he's made it onto one of he UK's most prestigious cooking shows, MasterChef: The Professionals.
Owen, 25, is competing in the semi-final of the BBC series on Monday, November 28. You can read all about his journey so far in the competition here. He started cooking at a young age, in a setting most of us are so familiar with, and from there his love for cooking snowballed.
"It's pretty cliche," he says, "but [I began] cooking from a young age being around my nan... I always have a fond memory of [me,] my brother and my sister going over her house around around this time of the year, doing mince pies and typical butterfly cakes, you know what I mean? And we did that every year. That was a lovely thing to do. And then yeah, I just started from there."
