MasterChef Australia star Matt Preston reveals how losing his 22-year-old brother still shapes his life: ‘There was a space’

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Matt Preston, a well-known former judge on MasterChef, has spoken about the profound impact of his younger brother’s death, sharing that the loss still affects him many years later.

Sixty-four-year-old Preston will be featured in the new SBS documentary, The Hospital: In the Deep End. He worked with doctors and nurses in the geriatric, neurology, and prostate cancer departments while filming.

Being in the hospital showed him the difficult side of healthcare, but it also brought back painful memories of a family loss that had a profound impact on his life.

His brother, William, tragically passed away in 1988 at the young age of 22 from SUDEP, a condition that wasn’t well-known or understood at the time.

This rare condition involves the sudden, unexpected death of a person with epilepsy who is otherwise healthy. It happens without any clear cause, and isn’t due to an accident caused by a seizure.

Preston says the stigma around epilepsy back then was frighteningly primitive.

He explained to the Herald Sun that when his brother was diagnosed with epilepsy, people reacted as if it were something out of the dark ages, comparing it to a scene from ‘The Exorcist’.

People used to be frightened of it, thinking it was something evil or demonic. But we’ve definitely come a long way since then.

We need to pay closer attention to research and care in neurology, as it’s a critically important field that will impact a growing number of people.

Over 200,000 people in Australia have epilepsy, and sadly, more than 170 lose their lives to it annually. Despite this, Preston feels that more research and financial support are needed to improve outcomes.

The loss also pushed his late mother to start a charity that continues today.

Yet it was only recently that the full emotional weight of losing his sibling truly hit home.

‘It only hit me this Christmas,’ he says. 

We were all together at the table – my wife’s family and one of my children, though two others were away traveling. It really struck me how much we missed my brother being there, and also his partner and their kids, and how those relationships would have enriched the gathering for my own children.

‘That’s an emotionally challenging thing to embrace.’ 

This difficult event was a major reason the reality TV star, who was born in London, decided to move to Australia.

He explained that he first came to Australia after his brother’s death, needing time away to cope with the loss. He saw it as a way to heal and take some much-needed space.

I took a four-month trip around the world, which led me to Australia, and ultimately, I decided to move here. It definitely felt like I was taking control of my life and making the most of it.

Filming in hospitals for the documentary made Preston face his previous loss and truly understand how delicate life can be.

The experience made him deeply admire healthcare workers, but it also showed him he wasn’t cut out for the profession himself.

He described feeling constantly stressed and admitted that after some particularly difficult days, he was left wondering why others acted the way they did and how they managed it.

After losing his brother and seeing his mother’s health worsen, Preston now thinks about time and what truly matters in life differently.

I’ve been really trying to prioritize what’s important to me lately, and it’s made a huge difference. Honestly, it feels so good to spend my time on things I actually care about – it’s incredibly fulfilling.

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2026-03-01 04:09