{"id":499216,"date":"2026-06-28T06:31:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-28T06:31:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/499216\/"},"modified":"2026-06-28T06:31:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-28T06:31:08","slug":"colin-fassnidge-and-manu-feildel-on-bromance-boxing-and-wild-nz-rides","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/499216\/","title":{"rendered":"Colin Fassnidge and Manu Feildel on bromance, boxing and wild NZ rides"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cTemper!\u201d Colin interjects. \u201cHe got grumpy. I\u2019d opened some beers about two weeks before and it sprayed on him when he was cooking kingfish. He\u2019s the sort of person who holds on to things for weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSome people call it revenge,\u201d shrugs Manu. \u201cI call it karma.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ManuManu and Colin say season two of Off The Grid is a wild ride. Photo \/ Babiche Martens<\/p>\n

One thing the two Sydney-based chefs, both 52, do agree on is that season two of Off The Grid<\/a> is a wild ride. There\u2019s a helicopter flight across Fiordland, a kaimoana cook-up on Ninety Mile Beach and pig hunting on the banks of the Whanganui River.<\/p>\n

Colin says the hunting episode is \u201cgreat TV\u201d but may be confronting for some. <\/p>\n

\u201cOne way to conserve the environment is to kill these wild pigs because they root out the kiwi nests,\u201d says Colin. \u201cThey\u2019re a problem and they must be gotten rid of, but there\u2019s going to be blowback because it\u2019s pretty full on!<\/p>\n

\u201cThey hunt them with dogs. In the end, we got one and you can\u2019t shoot it because it\u2019s in the forest with the dog, so you do it with a knife. Then we carried the boar out of the forest.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s one of their many exhilarating Aotearoa adventures, which are also peppered with moments of real significance. This season, they\u2019re gifted pounamu at a settlement near Ohakune, where rangatahi are taught to farm, hunt and cook.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe spent a day with these guys and they gave us new stones,\u201d says Irish-born Colin. \u201cMy stone had a sort of a weaving, which was Celtic. The guy said he was related to the Irish and his grandfather who passed on the stone to him was a cobbler. I started to tear up because my dad had a shoe shop and he\u2019d fix them as well. They said to me the stone finds the person \u2013 I was just blown away.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stillness is rare for the MKR pair, who are filming a new season of the hit cooking competition. Asked how it will compare to MasterChef<\/a>, Manu looks puzzled.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s MasterChef?\u201d he asks, smiling. \u201cThat\u2019s the one where they all cry? They\u2019re two different shows. They can be competitive, but one is very focused on the food and one\u2019s focused on entertaining. Both shows have got a place on the screen and we\u2019ve never compared ourselves, but we\u2019ve been rating much better than them for years, so the proof is in the pudding!\u201d<\/p>\n

\"BothBoth chefs love visiting New Zealand. Photo \/ Babiche Martens<\/p>\n

As part of embracing the intensity of their filming schedules, both have a new practice they swear by.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe swim in the ocean early in the morning, which is our new medicine,\u201d shares Manu. \u201cWhen you\u2019re busy, you forget about yourself a little bit, but the ocean is one of the things that remind us that we\u2019re alive and it\u2019s beautiful.\u201d<\/p>\n

Colin agrees, \u201cWe\u2019re big into mental health because we\u2019re at that age where we\u2019ve just been working and working, then we stop and we\u2019re like, \u2018I need to look after myself.\u2019 We talk and are very open about everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now they resolve conflict and stress with communication.<\/p>\n

\u201cOr he punches me in the face,\u201d laughs Colin. \u201cManu has a capsule in his head that stores \u2018things Colin did to annoy me\u2019. But we also have a little time apart as well.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cDoing two shows together, we need a break, but then we end up having Christmas together with our families because our wives get on. We\u2019re also going away to [food festival] Taste of Port Douglas and my daughter\u2019s looking after his daughter.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both chefs love visiting New Zealand and like to boast they should have Kiwi passports by now, but for Manu, the dream may become a reality in his retirement.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy wife and I are talking about the New Zealand path,\u201d he grins. \u201cYou can buy something beautiful, not be crowded and not have people jumping on you, and that\u2019s what I\u2019m looking forward to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Off The Grid With Colin And Manu screens 7.30pm Sundays on TVNZ 1 and streams on TVNZ+.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cTemper!\u201d Colin interjects. \u201cHe got grumpy. I\u2019d opened some beers about two weeks before and it sprayed on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":499217,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[433,95,40923,2023,249542,169,150592,8486,28829,156,249540,249541,55281,296,194,15973,2882,48955,111,139,69,90,21528,11745,1305,544,46849,165,48377,5977,15391,102],"class_list":["post-499216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-adventure","tag-and","tag-ask","tag-boxing","tag-bromance","tag-chef","tag-cohosts","tag-colin","tag-depends","tag-entertainment","tag-fassnidge","tag-feildel","tag-grid","tag-into","tag-kiwi","tag-longstanding","tag-love","tag-manu","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-rides","tag-rugged","tag-show","tag-some","tag-tested","tag-their","tag-tucking","tag-which","tag-wild","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=499216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/499217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=499216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=499216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=499216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}