TV’s “Dirty Vegan” Matt has transitioned from MTV Dirty Sanchez hellraiser to a vegan ultra-athlete. In 2019 he became the presenter of the BBC’s first vegan cookery show, Dirty Vegan, and saw the publication of his first cookery book to accompany the series. 2018 saw Matt complete the first ever triathlon to circumnavigate the whole of his home country of Wales as part of the BBC1 Wales/BBC iPlayer documentary Wild Man to Ironman – charting his extraordinary life.
At the age of 15 Matt picked up a skateboard and never looked back. He spent his younger years travelling to skateboard competitions all over the UK and Europe and eventually picked up sponsorship and turned pro. Then in his mid-20s he got a call from MTV…
In 2001 he began filming the first series of MTV’s Dirty Sanchez – the British equivalent of Jackass. It quickly became MTV’s highest rating show and made a star out of Matt and his friends. Three series of Dirty Sanchez and Dirty Sanchez: The Movie followed, as well as Balls of Steel for Channel 4.
Since 2011 Matt has run half and full marathons, single, double and triple Ironman distance events along with many other self-set challenges. In 2015 he became vegan after discovering that many ultra-athletes choose a plant-based diet for health reasons; a transition that was accelerated after he watched the anti-dairy documentary Cowspiracy. Veganism re-ignited his passion for cooking (he trained at catering college) and saw him start his own YouTube cooking show called Pritchard’s Proper Vegan Cooking.
Since the BBC series has aired Matt is in extraordinary demand at an international level, as he is breaking stereotypes around vegan food and has a genuinely infectious enthusiasm for life, centred around truly good food and extraordinary sporting achievements. He believes in celebrating the joy of beautiful, colourful, fresh plant-based dishes that are easy to cook at home – and the fact that his cook book Matt Pritchard’s Dirty Vegan is now an Amazon bestseller is testament to this. Though he still remains a bit of a rebel with an anarchic edge!
