Winner of season three John White got a cut on his hand from his food processor blade and had to leave the tent, but was allowed to come back and he stormed back to win.
Which was ultimately a bittersweet victory.
“Some days I wished I’d never been on the show, because in reality it totally derailed me from a steady life path,” John recalled in a 2019 essay in The telegraph. For a year, the former law student was in demand as a public figure, prompting him to quit his job at the Royal Bank of Scotland. But then interest waned, John explained, leaving him adrift. He started drinking and became depressed, “waiting by the phone like an anxious teenager from the 1980s urging his love to call.”
Recalling how he had no guidance on navigating fame, he continued, “maybe in the wake of reality TV star meltdowns and suicides, there should be serious reform of how contributors are prepared for, and guided through, their lives after the show. But I don’t think it would have made an ounce of difference even if they had. It came naturally to blind you to the addiction.”
John has since obtained his Diplôme de Pâtisserie from Le Cordon Bleu and published several cookbooks, and he ran his own cookery school, John Whaite Kitchen, until 2021.
He also made one short stay at OnlyFans 2025but quit that to focus on his business, Ruff Puff Bakehouse and Ruff Puff Brownies, which he founded with his husband, Paul Atkins.
