The MasterChef kitchen has been replaced with a new model featuring professional kit – you know, the stuff used by actual chefs versus TV chefs – and all contained within a vast golden cage … a gilded cage, if you will.

The three contestants have four hours to cook a dinner and a dessert service, to be served to a room full of ravenous diners. The winners will go into the grand final.

Brent's hair grows ever upwards and ever more ridiculous. Today his top knot can't even contain the strands, a few peeking out and giving him the appearance of a very hip grasshopper. Do the contestants get haircuts? Perhaps not.

Laura is cracking under the pressure, which is the name of the game after all. George tries to help.

George: (Yelling) “Laura?”
Laura: (In the manner of a petulant 19-year-old uni student, which she is) “yeah?”
George: “Would it be correct in saying you’re under pressure?”
Laura: “Would it be correct in saying you’re going to bleep bleep from my bleep with bleep unless you bleep.”

“What have you got to do with the apples Brent,” asks George.

“Cut them?” Brent answers after wrinkling his brow at the obviousness of the question.

Gary gives him a firm backhand to the face for his insolence. That should be “cut them chef!”

Brent has now moved onto his ice-cream. "Before the start of this competition I’ve only ever seen people using liquid nitrogen for burning off warts and corns," says Brent, who's something of a self-surgery fan. He also just put everyone off their dinner.

George starts critiquing the amount of chestnuts Laura has, delving into his actual cheffing background to point out that Laura is under the expected chestnut ratio.

"Yeah sure," says Matt quickly to hide his lack of knowledge on chestnut ratios - fair enough, he's not actually a chef.

The judges have told Emelia that her beef cheeks are already a failure. She's a big fan of them, and is very smug about the whole thing – we're talking Tony-Jones-on-Q&A-level smug.

"I'm already in front of Brent and Laura," says Emelia who, you know what, I really can't stand at this point.

"I wish I could wipe it for you, but I can't," George tells a rapidly plating/fading Brent, who's spilled some sauce/shed a single tear.

Laura is a long way behind, sadly. She's still cooking as the others plate, and keeps fibbing to George that she's just about to finish – a skill she learned at university, where each deadline set is a deadline to be missed.

The contestants plate and the food is served to the diners and the judges.

Gary is having conniptions over Brent's crackling. "You can't just be swayed by crackling," says Matt, who's still smarting over George's chestnut comments.

A firm distate and an upturned nose to the common man’s pleasures goes hand-in-hand with cravat wearing, to the surprise of nobody.

As we wind towards the finish line – one more show, scheduling gods be praised – the real question these contestants need to ask is: do any of them have enough charisma to make it anyway?

On tonight's evidence – no.

Plating seems to be more stressful than the actual cooking, a situation not helped by George – who is performing his piece of performance art (he wrote it himself!) on the role of middle management in today’s society.

Basically he’s yelling a lot and contributing nothing. Are the proles ready to rise up? Laura can be seen consulting her pocket copy of Engels under the table to check if this is the prophesised date.

Back to the judges, and Gary says he’s “died and gone to heaven”. He's leaning off the seat, wobbling about, saying nonsensical things. He’s having a good time.

Yeah. All right, everybody’s eaten, decision time.

"I think this is the first time when I honestly have no idea how this is going to turn out," says Laura, who has predicted it all so far.

Brent is the first through to the final. He’s gone "from bobcat driver to MasterChef finalist", says Matt, further angering the proles.

Brett seems in the spirit of it though, laughing as a bunch of D-list celebrities tell him his job is a joke and his life up until this point has been a failure.

Emelia tells the camera she thinks she's going home – which is such a lie. She's even smug when she lies, is our Emelia. Bless.

Laura goes through, and says "oh f---", which the cameras barely manage to miss. How endearing, the first real thing anyone's said on this show.

Emelia says it's "all good", and doesn't cry because she's a big girl and in her heart she knows she's better than the other two and Gary, Matt and George.

"What some people mistake as great arrogance, we see as great strength," says Matt, belling the cat.

And now onto the Grand Final.