At the end of 2010, one of the executive producers of my university's television station - and good friend of mine - asked me if I wanted to participate in a student version of the popular Channel 4 TV show - Come Dine With Me. I love cooking for people (just ask my housemates who sometimes get entire Thanksgiving dinners made for them on a whim), and quite enjoyed the concept of the show and so immediately agreed.
The concept of the show in short is that five strangers each host a dinner party and receive a score out of 10 by the other four contestants. The score can be based upon anything that occurs across the evening: food, presentation, atmosphere, entertainment etc. Fairly simple concept, but often with quite interesting results. In our case this was no exception. Every night was a different treat of food and fun, with five students hosting there was also a fair amount of wine that went into our bloodstreams on every night. Hence the title of this post.
Dan, Me, Tom, Charley, and Jack - The Come Dine With Me 'Family'
My first thoughts about doing the show were restricted to the actual cooking, but I soon realised that was really not what the show was about. In a article for the student paper I wrote this:
"Come Dine With Me is not just a cooking experience, but an experience of people. It’s definitely not something for everyone."
I still believe this everyday. In the weeks after the actual experience, as episodes were released onto the internet week by week, when friends, and the odd stranger have asked me about my experience, very few remember the food. What they do all seem to remember is the drama. It seems that allowing students with cameras into your house + heavy drinking by contestants = recipe for disaster/entertainment (depending on who you are). You are pushed into a situation where are you are essentially forced to have dinner with four strangers across three weekends - there is nothing natural about that, yet friendships were forged and hilarity - often at my expense - ensued.
I would hate to spoil the show for anyone so will not mention any specifics, but what I would like to say is that for the most part, it's true, and I wont deny that. I would argue that it wasn't wholly representative of my personality. There was some very clever editing, much of it makes for great entertainment, the kind of thing I would love to watch if I wasn't so personally involved in it. This post is not trying to clear up any misconceptions about me, I would say that I'm like that 70% of the time, it's just to hopefully make you a little more aware of how reality television works before you start to judge me or the other contestants.
When asked if I think it was a good experience I usually pause a moment before answering with 'well... it was an experience' - not giving an honest answer. It was good in the respect that I enjoyed myself at all the dinners, even my own. But it was also a warning to myself about signing up to do something like this when cameras are filming your every move. I suppose I'm lucky that this was only posted on a couple of websites, people do this kind of stuff on national television everyday for a bit of attention. Not for me thanks, I've learned my lesson.
Just remember that it's all for entertainment's sake. For your viewing pleasure all the episodes can be found here.
Ps. I have watched all of it. There are parts I enjoyed, others not so much. But either way, it is there to be enjoyed.
