Sarah Moore has revealed the surprising reality behind filming the hit BBC show Money for Nothing, admitting the team often has no idea what will happen when they arrive at a recycling centre.
The furniture upcycler lifted the lid on how the programme is made ahead of the new series, which returns on Monday (August 31) afternoon. Sarah was chatting with fellow Money for Nothing star Jacqui Joseph about the new series when she explained that there is no cast of people waiting to appear and no carefully planned scenes ready to go.
No cast, no plans – just turn up and see
Instead, the presenters simply turn up at a recycling centre and see what they can find. Sarah said: “We turn up at the recycling centre. It's not cast. We don't know what's happening.”
She also revealed that the hard work viewers see on screen really is as tough as it looks, with no behind-the-scenes team secretly doing the graft for them. “And behind the scenes, although Jackie's niece might be there today, there are no fairies doing the hard work for us,” she said. “And sometimes it's just really hard work and there's normally a stage in the middle of my projects where they look really s***.”
Public surprised into appearing on TV
But one of the biggest surprises for viewers could be just how spontaneous the filming process is. Sarah said she is constantly amazed by the number of members of the public who agree to appear on the show despite having no idea they could end up on television that day.
“I'm always amazed by the number of people who say yes to you,” she said. “You go to the recycling centre and you're wearing your worst clothes. There are people wearing flip-flops and socks on and nobody is thinking about it and we just literally say, ‘Will you be on TV?’”
Once someone agrees, the team has to quickly explain what is happening and get them ready to appear on camera. “We literally boss them through what's going on,” Sarah explained. “They open their boots and we say ‘can we take your stuff’ and we put a mic on them.”
New series and new presenter
For the unsuspecting members of the public, it can mean going from an ordinary trip to the tip to suddenly becoming part of a BBC television programme within minutes. “They go from five minutes of just innocently coming to drop off their gran's old armchair with a rat in it – to then being on TV,” Sarah said.
Her comments come as Money for Nothing prepares to return for a new series, with Sarah and Jacqui back among the presenters tasked with rescuing unwanted items and turning them into something new. The upcoming series will also see Rob Bent join the presenting line-up. Viewers may recognise him from Stacey Solomon's Sort Your Life Out and Alan Carr's Interior Design Masters, while he brings more than two decades of experience in storage solutions and home renovations to the BBC programme.
Together, the presenters will once again head to recycling centres to hunt for unwanted furniture and possessions that could be given a second life rather than being thrown away. Money for Nothing broadcasts Monday – Thursday at 2pm on BBC One and is available to watch on BBC iPlayer.
