You say you were out from 7am to 7pm each day, for four days. Could you give us a rough outline of what a typical day’s filming schedule looked like? Was there lots of waiting around?
Picked up by the crew at 7am and driven in two cars to get everyone in to the first location. There'd be a stop before usually in a local cafe to get extra footage some of which was included but they filmed a lot that wasn't put in too. They don't know what they will use until they get to the editing process. You wait in the car while they go and do the initial filming of the property so yes a lot of waiting around and you're miked up the whole time so have to be aware of what you say.
On arrival at the house you are filmed walking up to the presenter and then its the in-out of all the rooms. At some point they take you aside and ask a few specific questions which after a few houses can get difficult to think of things to say.
One house probably takes two to three hours but the time goes fast. Then you grab lunch and repeat in the afternoon. I think they have people on the show that are not as amenable and state they won't film after a specific time which I did on the final day saying I wanted to stop at 5pm not 7pm. They wanted to film a meal out and I politely declined.
And what was it like watching the show back on TV? I’m really camera shy so I’d be mortified. Was it weird or not?
I was petrified about watching it because thinking back over the 4 days you remember some stupid things at times. I hoped they'd be kind in the editing which they were. I guess if they didn't like you the end result could be completely different but then they want an entertaining programme so it's got to be appealing. I was surprised I didn't look bigger as I'd heard TV can do that. Of course my greatest fan was my mum and she'll have that snapshot of time forever.
I'm used to presentations for work so it wasn't all that much different and I love looking at property so that was really interesting too. Would I do it again? No thanks. 