Do we like them?

Do we like Gary Mehigan?

Our score: 6 out of 10. No harmful words or acts turned up and he does charity work, but the record I could verify is thin.

Gary Mehigan is best known as one of the three original judges on MasterChef Australia, alongside George Calombaris and Matt Preston. The trio left the show in 2019 after contract negotiations with Network 10 failed. Since then he has kept busy with food TV, a podcast and travel-and-cooking gigs, with a lot of work pitched at India and Sri Lanka.

The messiest moment of his public life was the 2019 exit. Mehigan told the Sydney Morning Herald it was not about cash: “It was never about the money and never will be about the money.” He said the judges wanted to wrap up in early 2020 to pursue their own projects, and that the network wanted them tied up until the end of that year. He also said the network never phoned him and that his axing was abrupt.

The shadow over that period is Calombaris, not Mehigan. In 2019 Calombaris admitted underpaying about 500 employees $7.8 million in wages over six years, and said he and his company have since repaid the wages and super. Nothing in the pages I read links Mehigan to that, but the trio were a package deal on screen, so some of the stink drifted over all three.

On the harm check, the search came back empty. I found nothing from Mehigan on trans people, gay people, women, migrants, vaccines or the climate, in either direction, and nothing about him pushing conspiracy theories or working with people who do. That is a thin result, not a glowing one: it means no red flags, not a long record of standing up for anyone.

The recent news is a rumour, not a fact. In January 2026 The Nightly reported, citing an anonymous insider speaking to New Idea, that the three original judges were in talks about joining I’m A Celebrity. I found no confirmation that it happened, so treat it as tabloid-adjacent territory until someone official says so.

So where does that leave us? He has not put a foot wrong that I could find, he has stayed out of culture-war fights, and the 2019 split reads as a contract spat. I could not open pages on his charity work or an old report of a builder's bill dispute, so those are not part of this verdict. A fair mate would say: probably fine to like, with the honest note that the file is short.