A FORMER Come Dine With Me contestant has revealed how show bosses told her what to say and how to look.
The Channel 4 show has been airing since January 2005 and sees five members of the public from the same area compete to be voted as the best host and win a cash prize.
Katy Spence appeared on the show in 2014 and has been sharing behind-the-scenes revelations on her TikTok.
As well as revealing how the taxi’s home are a ‘sham’ and how it cost her £600 to host her evening and attend the other people’s dinners, Katy has now opened up about how staged the show is.
After being asked about it on TikTok, she said: “It is reality TV, same camera people, the same producers from The Only Way is Essex and I think we can all agree that’s not a documentary.
“Engineered reality is probably the best way to describe it. It didn’t not happen but you’ve never ever sat at a table saying over you ‘Just ask them that’, ‘look at them that way’, ‘Kate look over there and just look confused’.
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“Credit to them, the psychology of pairing people who might be clashes without you even realising, taking tiny bits of your personality that maybe you don’t even know or even think you’ve said and engineering conversations so that these things are abrased together.”
Kate revealed how she entered the show because she “used to win things” and had won money for the recipe for her dish.
Show bosses then put it on the menu before asking the other guests why they thought her food might be ‘prize winning’.
She continued: “You had to answer your questions like you had a made a statement, you have to say things like ‘Susan really is this’, like it’s not prompted.”
Katy then told her followers how one of her fellow diners had received “an awful lot of flack” after appearing on the show which she felt was unjustified.
“She’s very honest and not abrupt but speaks her mind, and I think they encouraged that to paint her into the villain, she wasn’t, she was absolutely hilarious, we were crying with laughter at the things she was saying.
“But you watch the edit back and you’re thinking ‘well that came across as mean’ and it wasn’t. Those 24 minutes represent you.”
Katy concluded: “It’s engineered reality, that’s my opinion of it. They took little bits about me and the other contestants and made it our entire personalities, to some extent making us caricatures.”
Come Dine With Me airs on Channel 4 and is available on All 4.
