"I had a bet with the producer's husband and he said I reckon it's going to get to 100,000 views," McLennan says of the day the series really went viral. "We were both at an engagement party and we sat there and he pulled out his phone and the YouTube hits had jumped up by 70,000 in the space of an afternoon. It clocked over to 100,000 that night.
"IKEA at the best of times is quite stressful but add on being eight-and-a-half months pregnant and then add on this weird explosion on all your social media fronts."
"I still owe him 20 bucks," McLennan adds with a laugh.
For McCartney, the day the series went viral was a lot less celebratory. "I was in IKEA buying baby furniture and storage solutions. It was so stressful. IKEA at the best of times is quite stressful but add on being eight-and-a-half months pregnant and then add on this weird explosion on all your social media fronts. That was real breakdown territory," McCartney says.
This time around, Australian cooking's most dysfunctional hosts should know what to expect. Season two has just launched on ABC iview with another six episodes of The Katering Show's attempts to unlock the culinary secrets behind ramen, cheese and wedding catering, plus their first celebrity guest, all while taking into account McCartney's particularly restrictive food allergies.
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And while McLennan has always been quite vocal in her mockery of her friend's condition, becoming a mum has changed McLennan's tune somewhat. "I've almost swung around to McCartney's way of eating now," McLennan says of motherhood. "I pretty much only eat things I can hold in one hand. A lot of muesli bars, bits of biscuit and wraps. Anything from the fridge just chucked in a wrap and then I eat it in one hand."
"That does sound like me," McCartney throws in.
Anyone who has seen series one's most popular episode where the ladies road-test a Thermomix won't be surprised when the question of their culinary ideals throws up a couple of names not usually listed alongside the Maggie Beers, Nigella Lawsons or Rene Redzepis of the cooking world. "Mine's Cookie Monster," McCartney shouts like an overexcited three-year-old.
"The Swedish Chef as well," McLennan adds.
"Anything that's puppet-based."
McLennan does eventually offer up a slightly more serious answer. "I always come back to watching Maeve O'Meara on SBS. She just kind of flirts with a lot of men and wears very vibrant clothes. But she is my go-to lady. She is my onscreen culinary hero."
Of the six episodes just released on iview, McLennan and McCartney have a special place in their hearts for It Gets Feta — an episode devoted to all things cheese. "It was written in a hurry basically when we were in pre-production already," McCartney explains. "We hadn't finished that script so we had two nights when McLennan's bub was very young and we wrote this script very quickly and you can tell it's the product of two incredibly tired minds. We edited it to seem like it made sense so you can imagine how it was written on the page."
"It's just completely off-tap," McLennan says gleefully. "It ends with me waving at some imaginary audience."
