Season 3 winner John White cut his hand on a food processor blade and had to leave the tent, but was allowed to return and stormed back to win.
In the end, it was a bittersweet victory.
“There were days I wished I had never been on the show. In fact, the show completely threw me off a stable path in life,” John recalled in a 2019 essay for the Telegraph. The former law student had been in high demand as a public figure for a year, prompting him to quit his job at the Royal Bank of Scotland. But then, John explained, his interest waned and he was left adrift. He started drinking and became depressed, and was described as “an angsty teenager from the 1980s waiting by the phone to call his crush.”
Recalling that he had no guidelines for navigating fame, he continued: “Perhaps in the wake of reality TV star debacles and suicides, there needs to be some serious reform in the way contributors are prepared and guided for life after the show. But even if that were the case, I don’t think it would have changed one bit. The addiction to glare was natural to me when I was young.”
John has since completed a Diploma in Patisserie from Le Cordon Bleu, published several cookbooks and ran his own cooking school, John White Kitchen, until 2021.
He also had a brief stint on OnlyFans in 2025, but left it to focus on his own company, Laugh Puff Bakehouse and Laugh Puff Brownies, which he founded with husband Paul Atkins.
