Why My Kitchen Rules' Tyson is no longer an angry man
Until Tyson and his sister Amy earned a record-high 102 points in their Instant Restaurant on Tuesday, the serious siblings from Brisbane were known mostly for the tension generated by Tyson during table talk on My Kitchen Rules, which earned him a lot of social media haters.
"It's not a great feeling," Tyson admits to WHO about the negative attention. "I went into the competition loving food and wanting to be passionate about food and that's how I critiqued the food. I never commented on the people or the person cooking."
He also pulled focus with his hot temper, one that would flare up dramatically in his a tightening of his jaw and other physical markers and a side of him that his sister calls the Angry Angry Man.
"I think our dad was the original Angry Angry Man," Amy says, describing how little problems, such as a pen not working, could make him lose it but "in a really adorable way. Tyson's a chip off the old block."
For his part, Tyson sensed he inherited his father's short fuse when he was young. "It's always about fairly stupid stuff," he says. "I very rarely get angry about anything serious. I very rarely get emotional about anything, but when something doesn't work properly and it should be working properly, that's when I'll get angry."
But his and Amy's strong showing during their Instant Kitchen, in a night when a deep fryer malfunctioned and they still served good food, has helped Tyson turn a corner.
"I think I embraced the pressure of cooking," Tyson says. "I used to get quite worked up about it because I'm such a perfectionist and I just want to perform the best I can."
Tyson credits MKR for calming him down. "Pete and Manu said that you can be passionate and perfectionist with food, "Tyson says, "but you don't have to be to the point of being aggressive. You can use that stress to push yourself, but you don't actually have to be out of control."
And now, Tyson has stopped driving for Uber and is instead pursuing a food career. Says Tyson, "I think we can say that now, I am not the angry angry man!"
To read more about Tyson (and to find out his Uber driver rating!), pick up the latest WHO on newsstands today.