
Pete Goffe-Wood on food, comedy, and not burning your sausage at Redfest
For celebrity chef Goffe-Wood, the leap from knives to punchlines has been as satisfying as a perfectly cooked meal, and just as nerve-wracking.
Read more: RedFest 2025 lights up Sandton
Known for his sharp tongue and culinary prowess, Goffe-Wood says comedy was always brewing in the background. 'I was always the funny guy in my group of friends.'
He added that he is a lifelong fan of The Goons and Monty Python, and he even dipped his toe into stand-up back when he was an apprentice chef.
Goffe-Wood pointed out that his partnership with stand-up veteran Forrest sparked during filming for Celebrity MasterChef.
Their dry humour clicked instantly, and a throwaway idea for a cooking-comedy show soon became Don't Burn Your Sausage.
'Chris booked us a slot at the National Arts Festival before we even wrote it,' Goffe-Wood continued. 'So, we had no choice but to get it done.'
He said the show has evolved into a deliciously naughty blend of food, sex, and improv. 'A large part of it depends on the audience's vibe. Chris is brilliant at improvisation. I just react to his chaos.'
When asked about the thrill, Goffe-Wood admits it's a rush like no other. 'In the kitchen, you wait till the meal's done to know if people liked it. On stage, the laughter is immediate.'
After a decade on the road with Don't Burn Your Sausage, Goffe-Wood says the show is still sizzling, and they are already cooking up a new one. 'We do a lot of corporate gigs, so our story keeps evolving. And yes, humour is what gets you through those pressure-cooker moments in any kitchen.'
Follow us on our Whatsapp channel, Facebook, X, Instagram and TikTok for the latest updates and inspiration! Have a story idea? We'd love to hear from you – join our WhatsApp group and share your thoughts!
At Caxton, we employ humans to generate daily fresh news, not AI intervention. Happy reading!
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Daily Maverick
13 hours ago
- Daily Maverick
Bridling: A poignant exploration of women's silence in the shadow of artistic authority
Silence and lack of autonomy are the torments at the heart of Bridling, a short story that's now a riveting play debuting at the National Arts Festival in Makhanda this week. The terror of it struck me instantly. Only for a moment, but as the stage lights came up and we witnessed actor Buhle Ngaba on a chair placed on top of a table, facing the audience, her face trapped inside that mask-like contraption, the sense of physical and psychological torment was all too real. My whole body felt it, in fact: the terror of her entrapment causing a kind of constriction, claustrophobia, and panic. Seeing it worn instantly propelled my imagination into the realm of horror, of subjugation, of control, censorship, authoritarian tyranny. It's something akin to that terrible mask used to restrain the captured cannibal, Hannibal Lecter, in Silence of the Lambs, and not at all unlike masks used for silencing women in the television serialisation of The Handmaid's Tale. The scold's bridle, also known as a witch's bridle or gossip's bridle, was a regular instrument of torture, subjugation and restraint used on women in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. These things are very real, though, displayed in museums around the world, including a number of museums specifically dedicated to showcasing instruments of mediaeval torture. I felt that visceral response to the contraption again when Ngaba removed the hideous thing from her face and began her calm, methodical description of how it functions, its constituent parts including a metal bit that would have been placed inside the wearer's mouth, and its usage as a device for punishing women judged to be too rowdy, outspoken, rambunctious, or simply too gossipy. It was an object not only of humiliation but made to tame and temper its wearer, silence them by making speech impossible. Plus, of course, there was the obvious shame of having this heavy metal object placed like a cage around one's head and face. It seems untenable that such a device would even exist in any civilised reality. And yet these contraptions were once legion, and in fact existed in a dizzying assortment of designs, configurations and degrees of horror. Despite the shock of that initial image of Ngaba caged and silenced, there was a gentleness that followed, assurance from her that she was not in fact gagged, that the scold's bridle she'd had on was a prop. In fact, rather than Ngaba's character having a bit in her mouth so that she cannot speak, she is the play's narrator. It is essentially her story, a monologue that is a coming-to-life of Nadia Davids' award-winning short story, Bridling, about a young, early-in-her-career actress (it could, in some alternate reality, be Ngaba herself) who auditions for a role in a new performance devised by some hotshot theatre director with a penchant for creating work that is disturbing and challenging. Non-theatre In this case, his conceptual piece — the play within the play — is something akin to non-theatre, a work of performance art that will require its cast of 12 (as in the number of disciples who followed Christ around) female performers to enact three-dimensional living facsimiles of notable artworks. Each of the paintings selected for such enactment is of a woman and each is by a male artist. Each of the paintings also alludes in some way to a questionable male gaze. Whether it's because the woman being depicted is nude or scantily clad, or has been subjected to some sort of violence, what's evoked is a sense of their having been objectified, victimised, brutalised, captured, trapped or imprisoned by the picture's frame — and, presumably, by the artist responsible. In Bridling, as much as we follow the Narrator's story, we are also witness to a case study of men whose authority resides in their genius. Specifically, artistic genius. It's represented here by the hypnotic dancer and actor Shaun Oelf, who plays a kind of ethereal representation of the rock-star theatre director whose artistic genius grants him some sort of presumed permission to exercise control and power over the women in his cast, effectively his harem of performers. From their nerves and anxiety leading up to their audition for him, through to the last emotionally shattering straw of the show they're cast in and for which they're asked to give up their autonomy, we witness a complex power game play out, hearing the consequences — emotional, psychological and metaphysical – for the women involved from Ngaba's Narrator. There are physical consequences, too. Not only are there viscerally punishing acts such as wearing that terrifying scold's bridle, but each of the women performing the play-within-the-play must effectively submit to acts of self-torture in order to satisfy the artistic ambitions of their director. Because, in order to make his lofty work a reality, each of the tableaux will require the women featured in them to remain absolutely still and silent for the five-hour duration of each performance. The director refers to it as 'durational performance art'. Herein, he tells them again and again, lies the crux of the piece: its political significance, in other words, is the pain they must endure as they render themselves motionless, silent, and in a sense, absent. Anyone who has ever attempted to sit dead still for, say, an hour of meditation will know the kind of intense suffering that's expected from the women actors that Bridling talks about. We learn of this suffering from the descriptions in Ngaba's monologue, hear how women begin to drop out of the show because of the physical torment and mental anguish it causes. Of course it is unbearable. But, as an aspiring actor, as someone who wishes to please her (male) director, the Narrator sticks it out, is determined to push herself beyond reasonable limits. Charming and entertaining This might sound like a formula for a show that's very grim, perhaps too dark and shadowy, too lugubrious and menacing. And yet while those elements are all there, the playmaking brings just the right degree of buoyancy and lightness to ensure that — in spite of all the creepiness and under-the-surface horror — it's charming and entertaining, too. It is a fabulous play, in fact, so delicately and powerfully directed by Jay Pather who has imbued it with rich imagery, incredible dancing and such beautiful theatricality. It lifts you up, nourishes you, and it does so without allowing the weight and depth of the traumas it reveals to bring you down. And it is also a mirror on itself, a play about the act of making a play. Davids has stated that one of the themes in the story is that of agency, and another is 'co-opted feminism'. A brutal realisation is that we in the audience are witness to some of the ways in which the art world itself can be — and often is — a place where women's voices are silenced, where their cooperation is demanded at the expense of their own agency, where they become part of the toolkit for someone else's power and fame and celebrity. Davids herself worked in theatre for at least 20 years and came to recognise some of the contradictions within that world, a place that can be so liberating and represent such freedom and outspokenness, and yet which — like most things — has a shadow side, a darker aspect. In this theatrical evocation of the story, that darkness or shadow is brought to life not only by such startling images as seeing Ngaba wearing the scold's bridle, but by Oelf's whimsical representation of the theatre director who is accorded such power and whose ego borders on the satirical. There is a lightness, not only in the manner with which this mesmerising dancer floats so lightly and imperceptibly about the stage, hops onto tables and moves insect-like, birdlike, spirit-like from one position to the next, but also in a kind of breezy parodying of his character, whose menace is cleverly undercut by a ridiculous blonde wig, an exaggerated paunch and by both Oelf's subtle comedy and his inescapable humanity. As Ngaba's Narrator recalls the sequence of events surrounding the show, Oelf's narcissistic director dances in order to evoke an array of emotions, outbursts, reactions, admonitions and postures of self-importance. At some point, though, he is unmasked, has the physical trappings of his rock-star persona stripped away as Ngaba pulls off his pants, snatches away his fat suit and disappears the wig. Near-naked, he stands before us, simply another human. There's a sweetness in this, an unmasking or bearing of innocence, as though what's revealed visually is the deconstruction of identity and of power, how we humans accumulate the trappings of who we are, wear them like a kind of armour, costume, or mask. For the Narrator, however, there is a kind of Stockholm syndrome inability to escape the trap that is her role in this genius director's morbidly inactive, silent non-play. She has chosen to be in this harrowing performance and now it has become her fate, her prison. Gut-wrenching and profound There's a gut-wrenching and profound moment in which Ngaba, who is so wholeheartedly immersed in her character, who is an actor, wakes as if from a dream and calls out: 'Line, line, line…' And, for a brief moment, you suspect that the entire thing has become unhinged, the thread snapped, the train of thought broken, that this wonderful actor who has kept her cool through this very long and difficult monologue has forgotten her words and requires a cue from the stage manager. But of course she is still completely in character. Her character has been consumed by the nightmare of the role she must perform, again and again. She is begging the universe, or God, or anyone who might be listening, to give her a line to speak, to give her something to do — anything that will help her escape the silence and non-action of her performance in this director/dictator's cruel production. In that moment, my heart broke. It was a reminder that the pernicious silencing and censoring and subjugation of women does not and never has required something physical, such as a scold's bridle, to be enforced. We have to simply step into a gallery or look around the world to see who holds most of the power. The evidence is everywhere, even in theatres, where one imagines that freedom is being performed. What Bridling does with such force and such poetry is give a voice to those who have, throughout history, endured countless mechanisms of silence. DM


The Citizen
20 hours ago
- The Citizen
Pete Goffe-Wood on food, comedy, and not burning your sausage at Redfest
If you think kitchens are stressful, try making a theatre full of people laugh. Pete Goffe-Wood and Chris Forrest did exactly that at the Redfest festival in Morningside. For celebrity chef Goffe-Wood, the leap from knives to punchlines has been as satisfying as a perfectly cooked meal, and just as nerve-wracking. Read more: RedFest 2025 lights up Sandton Known for his sharp tongue and culinary prowess, Goffe-Wood says comedy was always brewing in the background. 'I was always the funny guy in my group of friends.' He added that he is a lifelong fan of The Goons and Monty Python, and he even dipped his toe into stand-up back when he was an apprentice chef. Goffe-Wood pointed out that his partnership with stand-up veteran Forrest sparked during filming for Celebrity MasterChef. Their dry humour clicked instantly, and a throwaway idea for a cooking-comedy show soon became Don't Burn Your Sausage. 'Chris booked us a slot at the National Arts Festival before we even wrote it,' Goffe-Wood continued. 'So, we had no choice but to get it done.' He said the show has evolved into a deliciously naughty blend of food, sex, and improv. 'A large part of it depends on the audience's vibe. Chris is brilliant at improvisation. I just react to his chaos.' When asked about the thrill, Goffe-Wood admits it's a rush like no other. 'In the kitchen, you wait till the meal's done to know if people liked it. On stage, the laughter is immediate.' After a decade on the road with Don't Burn Your Sausage, Goffe-Wood says the show is still sizzling, and they are already cooking up a new one. 'We do a lot of corporate gigs, so our story keeps evolving. And yes, humour is what gets you through those pressure-cooker moments in any kitchen.' Follow us on our Whatsapp channel, Facebook, X, Instagram and TikTok for the latest updates and inspiration! Have a story idea? We'd love to hear from you – join our WhatsApp group and share your thoughts! At Caxton, we employ humans to generate daily fresh news, not AI intervention. Happy reading!


The Citizen
a day ago
- The Citizen
Ballito skaters bring the heat to O'Neill Ballito Bowl Skate Jam
The 2025 O'Neill Ballito Bowl Skate Jam delivered an electrifying showcase of South African skateboarding talent on Saturday. Cape Town's Thalente Biyela (31) and Ballito local Ezra Vosloo (14) claimed top honors in their respective divisions. Two-time Olympian and four-time South African champion skater Brandan Valjalo (26) won Best Trick, while Vosloo won Best Grom Trick in front of a boisterous home crowd. Ballito's Kalvyn Mac Millan – a two-time Open champion – finished second. Biyela, a Durban Beach Park original, made a name for himself in the Mother City, but he is still a home favourite. 'I really loved the atmosphere. Having all the locals showing support was so amazing. I spent many years here, so it feels like a second home,' he said. Biyela, whose journey from street skater to professional athlete was captured in the award-winning documentary I Am Thalente, featuring Tony Hawk, was impressed with the level of competition and enjoyed skating against the girls. 'It was great seeing all the young new talent coming up. Seeing the progression from the past few events is absolutely mind-blowing. 'Competing alongside some of the younger girls just made it an all-around incredible experience. I'm so stoked to have been a part of it all. Looking forward to next year,' he added. As well as winning the Groms U16 division and best trick, Vosloo finished third in the Open division. 'I've worked really hard for this, skating as much as I can. It has been a goal of mine for a while to be placed in the top three with all the legendary South African skaters,' he said. Valjalo competed in the 2020 and 2024 Summer Olympics, the World Skate Championships and the World Cup Series. He won the African Championship title at Ultimate X in 2017, crediting his street skating ability for winning the trick competition. 'I incorporated one of the street obstacles into the bowl and came through with a kickflip manual, all the way around and dropped down 50 into the bowl for the first trick,' he said. OSP Events Co. founder Markus Müseler said it was another great event. 'The skating was epic! The crowd was incredible and the vibe was amazing,' said Müseler. Stay in the loop with The North Coast Courier on Facebook, X, Instagram & YouTube for the latest news. Mobile users can join our WhatsApp Broadcast Service here or if you're on desktop, scan the QR code below. At Caxton, we employ humans to generate daily fresh news, not AI intervention. Happy reading!