Missing out on a trip to the judges’ chamber this week was Jason Hughes from Chateau Rhianfa in Anglesey. His fish course had scored highest of the three with guest chef, Paul Ainsworth, making his Great British Menu debut as a ‘veteran’. Jason’s seafood tribute to NHS support staff, called ‘A Lot Behind the Scenes’ had a winning combination of sweet potato puree in scallop shells, crispy chicken skin and crunchy seed and honey granola to complement pan-fried scallops in spicy Café de Paris butter. Sadly Jason mistimed (and misjudged) his other courses, delivering them late to the pass. By the time he reached his dessert, his luck really was running out and his chances failed to take off (as did his uninflated edible green apple helium balloon).

Chris presents a crate of crisp, scallop-stuffed apples for his fish course. With the somewhat inflated title of ‘It’s Not an Aspirin, It’s an Apple a Day that Keeps the Doctor Away’, he packs the apples with cubes of scallop marinated in meadowsweet vinegar, cauliflower puree, crab apple and rosehip jelly and caviar, decorates with yarrow leaf and serves with edible cracker-dough and rice-paper prescriptions.

Unfortunately the dish’s curative properties fail to revive the judges – ‘This scallop died in vain’ Oliver bemoans, and Andi adds ‘in its little apple tomb’. Matthew dismisses it as ‘smush’.

Hoping to be restored by Chris’s main course, the judges tuck into a veritable pork-fest called ‘Everything but the Squeal’. Pork shoulder, belly, saddle, cutlets and fried pork croquettes pile onto a smear of caramelised celeriac puree. Pork faggots made from the leg, liver and kidney provide a tasty sharing dish, along with a salt-baked celeriac, blackened to resemble coal in another nod to Nye Bevan’s heritage. It scored a perfect ten with Paul Ainsworth and the judges seem to agree. Matthew calls it ‘a dish of gentle pleasures’ and guest judge Nye says ‘I’m enjoying this too much to talk’. She reflects on her introduction to truffles and charred celeriac and blissfully claims that she’s ‘ruined for life’.

For his main course, Andrew presents ‘Aneurin Bevan for Better Steak’. I’m sure this is a witty pun; perhaps adapted from a speech by the great man, possibly a campaign to improve hospital food, or maybe it’s just Bevan’s butchers’ order. Anyway I don’t get it, and sadly the judges don’t either. Oliver doesn’t think the sous-vide rib eye is well cooked and he dismisses the hay-cooked ox cheek as ‘terrible’. Nye says it’s ‘very tough’ and Matthew suggests ‘you need National Health dentures’.

Chris struggled to set his woodruff mousse on Thursday but it looks like he’s all set today. It sits firmly on layers of nettle and honey sponge and blackberry jelly and is topped with bramble compote and fresh viola flowers. Serving his ‘Tea and Cake’ dessert with pots of refreshing gingery green tea, he places tiny blocks of quince jelly on the saucers to look like golden sugar cubes. The judges agree the sponge needs a little work but Matthew thinks the woodruff custard is ‘delicious’ and Andi calls it ‘fantastic’. Nye’s culinary education continues and she admits ‘a Jaffa Cake will never taste the same to me after this’.

Andrew’s great grandmother, Nurse Onions, is the inspiration for his dessert. Andrew serves a chilled apple rice pudding with apple mousse, topped with apple butter puree and cubes of fermented apple. He grates frozen apple and blackberry over apple blossom and serves it with hay ice cream and ingenious shards of caramelised milk to imitate the skin of a rice pudding. What a pity Andrew’s great granny wasn’t called Nurse Apples… or Granny Smith.

Anyway, Oliver praises the pud’s originality and Andi calls it ‘a thing of beauty’. Nye concludes ‘this is special’.

So it looks like Andrew has saved the best to last and is going through… but no – foraging Chris has just unearthed enough points to beat him.

Behind the scenes, charming Nye is pleading with the producers to come back again. Matthew looks worried she’d be more popular than him. Frankly, there’s no competition.