Hermitage couple dish up culinary treat on national television

Competing for £1,000 cash prize

HERMITAGE soldiers will be watching the Channel 4 TV series Couples Come Dine With Me with interest later this month, to find out exactly what a colleague and his wife served up in one of the episodes.

Staff Sgt Chris Mobbs-McQuilkin, aged 40, of the Royal Army Physical Training Corps, and his wife Amanda, aged 36, who have lived in the village since 2011, are among contestants in a forthcoming programme which sees fellow diners awarding points for meals cooked from scratch, as they compete for a £1,000 prize.

Big fans of the programme, Mrs Mobbs-McQuilkin, a client solutions manager for recruitment specialist GradWeb, in Newbury, said they seized the chance to apply for a new series featuring couples after spotting a poster in Costa Coffee last summer.

“We are not chefs, but we love hosting and cooking,” said Mrs Mobbs-McQuilkin.

After a whirlwind of form filling, telephone interviews and two hours test filming at the couple’s home, filming for the programme took place in August, just four weeks after they had applied.

“It was a really long application form, including details of your likes as a couple, what you like/hate in a person,” Mrs Mobbs-McQuilkin said.

They didn’t meet the other couples until they walked through the door.

“They definitely throw you together with someone challenging,” she said.

Although not allowed to reveal the exact menu before the programme is broadcast, she said it comprised a fish starter, a chicken main and two desserts.

Dinner dress was ‘de rigueur’ for the evening “at theirs” and the evening went “really, really well”.

“It was very much like a military procedure, and exhausting – full on,” she said.

The programme airs at 5pm on Monday, December 14 .