(Please, Please, Please) Come Dine With Me

This article originally appeared on my blog in January 2020.

In today’s world of Netflix originals, glossy reality series and big-budget drama, it’s easy to forget about TV’s old reliables. The programmes with nothing to say, but so much to give — they’re the television equivalent of an ex that you can’t help but miss, despite having brought absolutely nothing to each other’s lives. The absolute king of this brand of TV can only be Come Dine With Me, the dinner party contest that began broadcasting in 1892 and has been playing simultaneously on all 26 branches of Channel 4 at every hour of every day ever since. Flick through the channels at any given moment and I can almost guarantee that it’s on.

Come Dine With Me, now in its 37th series (I’m actually not making that bit up), is unironically one of the best things ever aired on TV. During a casual viewing, it seems that nothing much happens, but a quick Google search unearths an absolute goldmine of unforgettable moments. Some have already been cemented into pop culture history, destined to be repeated on ‘100 Greatest…’ clip shows until the sun swallows the Earth whole. Such gems include the man who decided to sample a sauce he was making by nonchalantly shoving the whole whisk into his mouth and sore loser Peter Marsh’s ‘you won, Jane’ speech — which is, in my opinion, a hundred times more brutal than anything Ricky Gervais could or would ever come out with whilst presenting an awards ceremony.

Others are, unfortunately, never spoken about but remain a vivid memory in the consciousness of the lucky viewers who caught them. One such episode featured bucket-hat connoisseur Dom, a DJ who exclusively plays songs released by Manchester bands between 1989 and 1992 and proceeds to turn up to every dinner party with a carrier bag full of lager as a gift to the host (but ended up cracking each and every one by himself). There was also the iconic Preston week from series 7, in which we were introduced to so-posh-it-hurts Valerie Holliday, whose pronunciation of the word ‘pheasant’ (or fezzaaaunt, as she might say) is superglued to the insides of my brain, where it will stay for the rest of my days. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I’m sure we’ve all, at some point, had the ‘who would be invited to your dream dinner party?’ conversation with our friends or family, but what we should really be asking each other is “who would be on your dream episode of Come Dine With Me?”. If you think about it, they’re two very different questions, with very different answers. Of course, I’d love the chance to sit and speak with Tom Hanks, Mac Demarco and Phoebe Waller-Bridge over a glass of wine and a really good burger, but do I think it would make entertaining TV? Well, yeah, probably. But not on Come Dine With Me. That’s a horse of a very different colour.

Anyway, here’s what my dream episode of Come Dine With Me might look like. Narrated in your brain by Dave Lamb, probably.

Today, we’re in Blackpool, where our first contestant, well-disguised martian and freelance writer Betsy (that’s me!), is gearing up to host the opening night of the week — and we’re sure it’s going to be an absolute belter. Let’s see what her fellow dinner party guests make of the menu.

“A cheeseboard? As a starter? What’s that about?”, asks living soundbite and reality TV icon, Gemma Collins. She’s unimpressed with the menu, largely on the basis that it pales in comparison to the sort of luxury she’s used to, such as the gourmet camel penis she could have been tucking into on I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here! in 2014, had she not packed it in after three days. Actually, I think the celebrity version of Come Dine With Me might be the only reality programme that Gemma Collins is yet to appear in. Maybe we should be writing to the powers-that-be at Channel 4 and getting them to sort that out, since I’ll surely be making a strong case for her appearance here. Anyway, who’s next?

Our third contestant is equally disappointed with the offerings.

“I don’t fuck with stilton”, states the self-proclaimed second coming of Jesus, Kanye West. Yes, he’s an odd choice for a daytime cookery/popularity contest, especially since I’m almost 100% sure he doesn’t cook for himself under any circumstances and is probably only popular among people who’ve never had to try and sit through an actual conversation with him, but who cares? Kanye does what Kanye wants. And if Kanye wants to appear on Come Dine With Me, then that’s his business and he’ll shit in the Yeezys of anybody who disagrees. Or pay someone else to do it for him, obviously. Anyway, onto contestant number four, who can surely only be disappointing after that… can’t they?

Of course not! Contestant number four is TV’s shouty queen-of-clean Kim Woodburn, who is really excited to get her teeth into some red hot beef. Not the food kind, either. The kind of beef she dished out to Philip Schofield while he was asking her questions about the other beef she dished out in her fondly-remembered ‘chicken-livered bunch’ rant from Celebrity Big Brother. She’ll be glad to know I’m not serving any chicken livers at my dinner party, I’m sure. Not that she’ll be particularly enamoured with my cooking skills overall.

“It all looks terribly common, darling”, she says, as she holds the menu in one Marigold-wearing hand and a glass of an expensive gin in the other. Suit yourself, then, Kim.

Contestant number five hasn’t bothered to read the menu yet, but that’s because he’s been busy begging the Channel 4 producers on set for another series of Deal Or No Deal now that his hefty I’m A Celebrity paycheck is all but gone.

Yes, it’s Noel Edmonds, TV’s favourite bearded arsehole — after Alan Sugar, of course, but I’ve already written a bit about him on here, so there’d be no point in putting him in this one as well. You know, someone I knew a few years back once told me that Noel Edmonds did a guest lecture at his university, in which he offered some lucky students the chance to spend their summer doing a couple of months unpaid work experience on his radio show. Imagine that! Spending day-in-day-out with Noel Edmonds, without even a penny in compensation. I know they say ‘life’s not fair’, but that really would be pushing it.

Anyway, that’s everyone, and as I anxiously pour boiling water into five chicken and mushroom Pot Noodles, my all-star dinner guests begin to arrive. First at the doorstep is Kim, who I greet with open arms.

“Wonderful to meet you, luvvie”, she says. The worried glance she gives the camera afterwards tells me otherwise. Perhaps she’s unimpressed by my unshiny door handle. That’s not a euphemism.

Gemma and Noel arrive soon afterwards, both carrying bottles of champagne that I couldn’t possibly ever afford. They’re not to share, of course — they were bought in anticipation that the wine I’m providing wouldn’t be up to standard. Joke’s on them, though, because I’m serving all my courses with a glass of Summer Berries Echo Falls. It’s £5.99 a bottle and gets you absolutely Bankered.

We mingle in the living room, eagerly anticipating the arrival of my final guest. Just as Gemma, Kim and Noel begin bonding over the trials of being paid many thousands of pounds to sit around and simply exist for the viewing pleasures of mere mortals like myself, Kanye West teleports himself into the room, in a futuristic flash of lightning and to the tune of his 2010 hit Power, blowing a massive hole into the entire left side of my house in the process. It’s true what he says, you know — the man really is a genius.

We take our seats at the dinner table, as soon as the rest of my guests are done with the obligatory search through my knicker drawer (cue a comeback for Kim’s famous How Clean Is Your House? catchphrase, “Oh, you dirty devil!”) that happens on every edition of Come Dine With Me.

You know, despite everything else on the programme, that’s the one bit of it that I’ve never really understood. Every single one of the show’s 1,647 episodes includes a bizarre sequence in which the contestants go running around the host’s home, rifling through their personal belongings and mocking them for the cameras. I’m sure the point of it is supposed to be to give the guests a chance to ‘get to know’ the host, but then I’d have thought that spending five nights eating and chatting with them would be a fairly effective way of doing that. Besides, can you imagine catching your guests doing that in real life? I wouldn’t be sitting them down for a meal and rating them for a chance to win £1,000, I’d be throwing them out — maybe even calling the police, depending on what exactly they were doing with the belongings in question. Not that I have time to think about that right now, I’ve got a cheeseboard to prepare!

First topic of conversation is, of course, TV. As we tuck into our Ritz biscuits and Tesco Value mature cheddar, Noel gives us his opinion.

“My main issue with television these days is that I’m just not on it enough.” A valid viewpoint. We take a moment to collectively long for the days of Noel’s HQ, a drunken nightmare that was somehow harnessed and broadcast to the masses by Sky1, way back in 2008. Noel’s HQ has been mostly lost to time, except for the presence of a video on YouTube entitled ‘Noel Edmonds speaks with passion’. It’s well worth a watch if, like me, you enjoy four-minute long videos of TV presenters struggling to stifle their own belief that they might just be The Best Person Ever. There’s a great bit in it where he angrily declares to his delighted audience, “I don’t get paid a penny for doing this show”. Noel, I think I speak for everyone when I say ‘thank you for your sacrifice’.

Speaking of The Best Person Ever, Kanye is noticeably quiet. But then, Kanye isn’t here to share his views. Kanye isn’t particularly here to do anything. Kanye is simply here to observe — to greet his subjects and work out what makes them tick. Kanye can sense our excitement to be sat in his presence and Kanye enjoys this. It feeds Kanye, far more than my meagre dinner offerings ever could.

I press Gemma for her own opinions on TV, as someone who is literally always on it. Gemma Collins gets where Domestos can’t. In all honesty, I can’t help but love Gemma Collins. She’s famous for the sake of being famous, and she’s bloody good at it. She’s also quite possibly the most quotable public figure since Shakespeare himself — maybe even more than Shakespeare. Think about it — what inspires you more? “To be or not to be?”, like anyone knows what that actually means, or “Nah, fuck this, I’m out of here. Get that fire exit door. Am off.”? A poetic sentiment, which conveys an emotion we’ve surely all felt at some point in our lives — I know who gets my vote.

Kim misunderstands the question “what do you think of television today?” as “how clean do you think my television is?” and responds by pulling out a five-pack of dusters and a can of Mr Sheen, getting to work on the flatscreen in the corner of my living room. Oh well, at least all that cleaning will make her hungry in time for the main course. Speaking of which, maybe it’s time I got on with that.

Despite their disappointment with the starters, the main course — Super Noodle sandwiches, with a generous side-helping of curly fries — appears to delight all my guests, except Kim, who mutters under her breath that it all seems very tacky. I won’t let it get me down. It’s my heartfelt belief that anything can be a sandwich filling if you’re brave enough and my other three guests agree with me. Kanye lets out a satisfied ‘hm’. Excellent.

We sit down to dessert and another glass of Echo Falls. The wine is going down surprisingly well, especially with Kim, who has started subtly rolling her eyes at the conversation between myself and Gemma Collins, who are bonding over how much we both love Gemma Collins. Kim purses her lips. Her Spidey-senses are tingling. There’s beef afoot.

I quiz Noel about an article that I saw in 2015 and have never forgotten. It was featured on The Independent, and was headlined ‘Noel Edmonds says that ‘death doesn’t exist’ and that ‘Electrosmog’ is more deadly than Ebola’. I know that this sounds like something I just came up with, but I regret to tell you that is absolutely something he said in real life. I’ll give you a minute to take that in.

Noel Edmonds reaffirms this view to me, speaking with the same unnerving passion he did in the YouTube clip I mentioned earlier. I nod politely. I begin to wonder if everyone’s had a little too much Echo Falls and if I can really handle another four nights with these people. It’s at this moment that, for the first time all night, His Almighty Westness speaks.

“I really feel what you’re saying right now”, he tells Noel. We wait together for the next part of the statement, but it never comes. Kanye West outstretches his arm to Noel Edmonds. They shake hands. None of us can quite believe it. For a moment, Noel and Kanye are right — it does feel as though death doesn’t exist. Nothing exists outside of this dinner party. Everything that matters is happening around my dining table at this very second.

The silence is broken by Kim Woodburn tutting into a wine glass.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she drawls, rolling her eyes, “What a load of nonsensical shit.”

“Excuse me?”, asks Noel, still hand-in-hand with Kanye West, an alliance he is clearly eager to keep going for as long as possible on the off chance that he fancies funding another series of Noel’s House Party, “I don’t see you bringing anything to the table here, Kim.”

She widens her eyes, taking another generous gulp of Echo Falls — and I know exactly what she’s about to bring to the table. A big ol’ fight.

Gemma Collins throws in her two cents.

“I fink we should awl calm down a little bit, d’ya know what a mean? Am havin’ a lovely meal at a fan’s house, I can’t be arsed with an argument.” Wise words, as always, Gemma. Wise words.

It all kicks off.

“You can be quiet, you talentless, orange foghorn!”, sneers Kim, “You’ve contributed nothing to the conversation this evening, other than talking about yourself.”

Gemma’s eyes seem to cloud over with anger, as her complexion quickly transitions from Dulux shade Tangerine Twist to Cranberry Crunch. She knocks the rest of her wine back. Everything goes quiet again for a moment, as Noel, Kanye and I watch the two TV divas stare at each other. It’s like a scene from an old Western, but with diamonds and veneers.

With a violent roar, she launches herself across the table, grabbing Kim by her fake ponytail. I jump up to hold her back, as Kanye leaps from his seat to hold Kim from Gemma. There’s a mad blur of acrylic nails and tufts of bleach blonde hair flying between them, some of it landing into the banoffee pie I had worked so hard on. Noel stands back, arms folded, watching the action in dismay. If you could see the whole picture, it might resemble a renaissance painting, the sort that could be hung in a gallery anywhere in the world and analysed for its artistic importance. ‘Nous aimons le boeuf’, it might be called. French for ‘we love the beef’. Doesn’t really matter what it means, though, as long as it sounds clever and artsy.

Noel shakes his head.

“What the hell am I doing here?”, he asks, frustrated. “I’m a huge TV star.”

Security eventually intervenes, somewhat reluctantly, given the fact this is possibly the most action they’ve seen on a shoot for Come Dine With Me. Once the fracas is brought to an end, producers watch back the footage of the fight on an iPad, huddled excitedly on my sofa and attempting to mask their delight at what they’d caught on camera.

Kanye eventually stands up, soberly taking in the scene in front of him. Is this how Jay-Z felt as he left the elavator? he wonders.

“I’m gonna take off”, he informs everyone, breaking the silence that had fallen over the room in the aftermath. Before he can teleport out of the room again, possibly blowing a hole in the other side of my house, the producer speaks up.

“Same time tomorrow? It’s Gemma’s night.”

Four more nights of this… four more nights, all for the chance to win £1,000… is it worth it?

Of course, it is. It was a blast. Same time tomorrow, indeed.

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