A former Come Dine With Me contestant has lifted the lid on what really goes on behind the scenes of the Channel 4 show. Benjy Potter, who appeared in June 2020, shared his experiences in a series of TikTok clips, revealing that each dinner party lasts a whopping eight hours.
Eight-hour dinner parties
Benjy explained that contestants are dropped off at a "random house usually no more than 45 minutes away from yours" at around 4pm, and filming doesn't wrap until midnight. He said: "One of the things that people don't realise is that the dinner parties last eight hours. So you get in a cab and they don't tell you where the cab is going. You get dropped off at a random house - usually no more than 45 mins away from yours at about 4pm and you wrap filming at about midnight. So, you might see half an hour on telly but it lasts eight hours."
Cold food and confiscated booze
Because filming takes so long, Benjy revealed that the food is "always cold". He said: "They have to take so many different shots of it but by the time it gets on our plate and you eat it, it's cold." He also claimed that producers "more often than not" had to take alcohol away from contestants who had too much to drink. "One thing that they take away from contestants that you don't see on the finished show is booze," he explained. "Our crew that worked on our show told us that more often than not they have to take away alcohol from the contestants on the show because they get too drunk."
The fake black cab
Benjy also dropped a bombshell about the iconic black cab sequence at the end of each episode. He said: "One thing people don't actually realise is that the black cab is fake. And by that I mean it picks you up just to do the scoring, goes twice around the block, and then brings you back to the house you're in, and you go back in a mini cab later."
Come Dine With Me airs weekdays at 6:30pm on Channel 4.
