I'm so excited to be involved with "Oprah's Big Give". I’ve been making my own TV programmes for years and seeing how Oprah and her company, Harpo, work on their shows has been totally fascinating for me. The show they’ve made is absolutely brilliant—it's a reality TV show with heart. It isn’t horrible and negative like so much of what you see these days. It celebrates the best of human nature.

In a weird way, I think a lot of the stuff I’ve been involved with over the last five years prepared me for being a judge on this show. Back in the UK, one of my biggest projects has been setting up the Fifteen Foundation, which trains young, disadvantaged people for careers in the restaurant industry. Another major project has been my School Dinners campaign, which is basically about getting kids away from rubbish junk food and getting better, healthier food into them. Both experiences have been brilliant and having them behind me made me feel I’d be okay to do this job.

When I first showed up for filming, there were so many different characters from all over the country with totally different personalities. They could hardly contain themselves when they met Oprah, which was a complete surprise for them, so there was all this fantastic energy and excitement flying around. That sort of thing made it really hard for me to get a clear read on any of the contestants. Let’s just put it this way—on first impressions—the people that I would have picked as having a chance at winning usually didn’t make it as far as I would have thought (but I don’t want to give too much away).

In last night’s show, I paid a visit to Sheg and Carlana, who were definitely having a bit of trouble. When I gave them my advice, I told Sheg that he wasn’t being heard and he had to speak up more. Carlana is a wonderful and inspirational woman, but it was a team operation and there were lots of things that weren’t quite right with what they did.

I suppose I feel they missed the point. The fashion show didn’t seem to have too much to do with Eric's debt. And on top of that, the team just didn’t bond very well. But lucky for them, in the end they didn’t have the poorest performance…Marlene did.

Now Marlene is a dear and a sweetheart. Obviously her personal history shows that she’s a big giver and a person with a big heart. But, the whole point of this show is that the contestants prove they can roll their sleeves up, get stuck in and properly get to the heart of a situation. They have to find out what’s really needed and let their actions speak louder than words.

Unfortunately for Marlene, in that first week it just seemed that the other candidates were more emotionally connected to the people in need than she was, so we had to say, "Sorry darling, you’re out."