My Kitchen Rules: Ash and Stacey speak out about their shock exit
My Kitchen Rules' fan favourites Ash Keillah and Stacey Allen have made a sudden exit from the show.
The Byron Bay team decided to leave the cooking competition after Keillah developed a serious eye infection during filming.
"After we filmed the Bondi challenge, I was just wrecked and super run down and my eye socket started swelling up," Keillah told Confidential.
The surfer, who lost an eye in an incident on the Gold Coast 10 years ago, was told he should be put on bed rest and avoid working with food for a week.
"The doctor was really concerned — he was more concerned because I only have one eye and it was contagious," he said.
"No one wants to go out the way we did and I know how competitive Ash is but, at the end of the day, it was about his health," said Allen.
"We also didn't have to stuff the producers around and, in a week, three teams could go home and it wouldn't have been fair to them."
The couple said their time on MKR had been a "crazy ride". They said they had created "solid friendships" on the show and received great support from fans.
"There are some amazing cooks here and you guys are all going to go through and do really well," said Allen.
Keillah and Allen were one of the few teams who had had to pull out early in the show’s decade-long history. In 2015, mother-daughter duo Vicky and Celine Kaponias left due to a severe food poisoning case.
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