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THEY say if you can’t stand the heat, then get out of the kitchen. Which is exactly what several previous celebrity chefs have done in ITV’s Hell’s Kitchen.

Gordon Ramsay quit as head of the kitchen after the first series, in which celebrities got to show their culinary skills and get shouted at a lot by the chef.

Former Brookside actress and lads’ mag pin-up Jennifer Ellison was crowned the winner.

Jean-Christophe Novelli and Gary Rhodes took charge of a kitchen each for the second series. Members of the public came as contestants, competing for a £250,000 prize, which they could use to buy their own restaurant. Terry Miller scooped the top spot.

Marco Pierre White joined for the third series in 2007. He ejected Jim Davidson from the contest for alleged homophobic behaviour towards fellow cook Brian Dowling. Boxer Barry McGuigan won.

White, who became the youngest chef to win three Michelin stars in 1994, becomes the first chef to return to Hell’s Kitchen as the series begins a two-week run from tonight.

But there are changes elsewhere.

Angus Deayton is replaced as presenter by Claudia Winkleman.

The rules have altered, too. This time, there’s just one kitchen with all the celebrity cooks in one brigade. The two least useful members of the team will be relegated to being waiting staff before they are voted off permanently.

As usual, a motley band of celebrities has been rounded up to get cooking. They include Dynasty star Linda Evans, Bottom comedian Adrian Edmondson and Ms Dynamite, Niomi Daley.

Ex-Shameless actor Jody Latham, former Liverpool goalkeeper Bruce Grobbelaar and model-cum-Gary Lineker’s fiancee Danielle Bux will be putting on aprons, too.

Viewers will also be able to see how a husband and wife team work together, or more likely against each other, in the kitchen, as Grant Bovey and Anthea Turner, complete the line-up.

They’re relishing the prospect of going head-to-head. Former Blue Peter presenter Turner says: “If Grant gets a shouting at from Marco, then I’l join in. I’ll be on Marco’s side completely and if Grant’s my competition, then I’ll go for him.

“It’s funny, because Grant says I’m really competitive, but actually I’m only competitive with him. We’re two people in a household who have strong opinions and so we tend to get quite competitive over strange things.”

She sees herself as a “competent domestic cook, but no more”. She can do a dinner party, but always keeps everything simple.

“I’m completely self-taught as well, just from cook books and cookery programmes.

To be taught to cook properly by one of the best chefs in the world, who opened some of the best-ever restaurants, is a fantastic opportunity,” she adds.

She and Bovey confess they never spend time in the kitchen together because it leads to arguments. The very mention of making scrambled eggs nearly causes a minor domestic.

“It’s all to do with the temperature of the pan. Grant has it too high, but I like to take time,” says Turner.

Bovey adds: “This is a classic argument, often referred to. Anthea has an idea of doing something, and I have a different idea. Neither is right or wrong, they are just different, and that’s the way it is if we cook together. We end up with the same result, we just have different ways of getting there.”

Bovey’s biggest culinary disaster involved cooking a chicken in the Aga they have at home. “I just completely forgot I’d cooked it, and didn’t realise until the following day,” he says. “I came downstairs, and thought ‘that’s a funny smell’. I opened the Aga and the whole chicken had become completely carbonised, like a big lump of coal.”

He rates his wife’s chances far better than his own, but is confident of his frontof- house skills as he worked part-time in a restaurant when he was 16.

“The waiting thing has been put there as a form of punishment for slack contestants, but I don’t see it as a punishment.

Interacting with the guests – I won’t have a problem with that at all.”