Jayne Darling - Professional Singer of old fashioned tunes

Some very exciting news! In March we were chosen as contestants for a new series of Come Dine With Me, not the usual format but a special series focusing on couples. Ricky and I are huge fans of the how so were really excited to have been taking part.

After the initial interviews and test shots we were told we had made it through to the filming process and in early March we completed the filming over 4 days. The week prior to filming we had a huge clean and tidy up – we had only recently moved in to our house so we had a lot of jobs we had been planning to do but just had to make the most of the time we had available to make our home look as presentable as possible! We also didn’t have enough crockery or cutlery so a quick trip out to the shops and a few kind friends later we had a full quota of everything we needed.

The format of the show remains the same but this time it is the couple who are competing for the £1000 prize rather than an individual. We were to compete against two other couples.

Obviously prior to the screening of the show we are on we can’t comment on the actual content but we can say it was a fantastic week with lots of laughs but also very tiring.
The producers and crew made us very comfortable and warned us that the week would be very tiring as the filming process is long, in fact on the first night we didn’t get back home until 3 am. It’s amazing how quickly you forget that the cameras are there, especially when you are having dinner, however it is very surreal having a TV crew in your home. The production team at Come Dine With Me were fantastic and quite simply the most organised people I have ever worked with – they have a tight schedule yet it runs like clockwork with no signs of stress, even though it’s hard work for them and long hours particularly as they were filming another show that week alongside ours. In the interest of fairness the process is very strict from the recipes through to the cooking and scoring and they take a hard line on tactical voting.

Our time on Come Dine With me was a once in a lifetime experience and we would recommend anyone who is offered the chance to do a TV programme or indeed Come Dine With Me should jump at the chance.

A huge thanks should go to Sam and the production team who were wholly professional and made the whole process fun and very comfortable.

Our episode of Come Dine With Me will air on Channel 4 on Monday 14th July at 5 pm.