Tom Told Us What’s Really Going on With the T-Shirt Swapping on MasterChef

According to Conor Curran, it’s “the sisterhood of the travelling bumblebee top” and we are totally here for it.

On MasterChef Australia, there’s a T-shirt that seems to be making its way around the contestants — including Conor, Tom Levick and Dan Dumbrell.

The AS Colour tee — which absolutely resembles that of a bee — has been seen on multiple occasions, with fans starting to notice the colourful trend.

“They’re definitely sharing shirts,” one fan wrote on Twitter.

They’re definitely sharing shirts #masterchefau

— Ellen Seto (@adelugirl) May 23, 2021

In honour of this, we decided to find out from eliminated contestant, Tom, what the shirt swapping was all about.

“Well, the first thing you probably already know is that Dan, Conor and I have a very close friendship,” Tom told POPSUGAR Australia after his elimination. “And we’ve been together pretty much every second during the competition.”

“There was a new challenge where Conor got really into it and bought two of the same shirt — the bumblebee shirt, we coined it — and they wanted to wear it to the challenge.”

Unfortunately, the powers that be in production said they weren’t allowed to based on aesthetics of the show, however, each of them still got to wear it. And so did Tom.

“We didn’t really share clothes much,” he admitted. “But Dan thought it would be cute if I wore it too.”

While a novel and fun way to bond in the kitchen, it’s hard to argue that the shirts in question seem to be a bad luck charm with two of the three chefs who have worn it been sent home.

“It never brought us any luck,” he admitted. “Even during an elimination cook and Dan almost went home. They never brought us any luck. We should probably burn them.”

This week, Tom (and Conor) will have a chance for redemption with ‘second chance week’.

“There are positives and negatives [to coming back],” he admitted. “I think, the positive is that my head was still very much in the competition. I had more challenges in that kitchen than any of the other eliminated contestants.”

“However, all these other contestants had time to process their eliminations. Some of them might have gone and gotten professional experience in a professional kitchen and that would give them a massive leg up.

“I guess the third thing to throw in is it’s quite exhausting to walk out the kitchen one day and come back the very next day and contend with that exhaustion.”

Watch MasterChef Australia on Network Ten from 7.30pm, Sunday to Wednesday nights.