Why TV ‘legend’ Claire remains a flavour-ite with reality show fans
WHEN Claire Phillips was asked to appear on one of the UK’s most popular reality TV shows she thought it was a joke.
But since appearing on Channel 4’s Come Dine With Me in 2018 the 34-yearold has found herself in even more disbelief as she became one of the show’s most adored contestants.
Dubbed a “legend” on social media, Claire left viewers in stitches with her chaotic hosting technique and hilarious one-liners. She is best remembered for serving her prawn starters, “stir-loin” steak main, and sundae dessert on wooden planks as well as using her oven mitt to “glove” her chips into a wok.
But who really is Claire from Come Dine With Me? We got in touch with her to find out what she really thought of the show, how she’s found life since, and how it feels to be a real-life legend.
“It’s been three years,” she said. “And it has absolutely flown by. Everyone has still been talking about it - I think it’s because they’ve been repeated quite a lot, especially because of lockdown.
“I was working in Bannatyne in Cardiff at the time. I’m a therapist but was on reception one day when someone rung and asked if they knew of anyone who wanted to take part in the show. I was like ‘yes’ and had to apply - I was in the right place at the right time.
“At first I thought it might have been a joke. I had to apply and then I had a phone interview and things and then just after Christmas they got back to me. There were quite a few rounds to get through.”
Claire, from Pontycymer, said she finally found out she had been successful just a few days before filming while on a birthday trip to Amsterdam in late January 2018, with filming starting on February 12 that year.
She appeared in season 43 of the show alongside fellow contestants Scott, Anna, Charlotte, and Cardiff restaurant owner Giovanni Malacrino.
Claire’s menu consisted of “prawns on a plank” to start while for main it was “steak Americano”. To round off the meal, dessert was a chocolate sundae with a twist. She said she wanted to challenge herself with her menu but admitted she was a little less than prepared when it was her turn to host on the Wednesday.
“I hadn’t bought any of the food and I was exhausted - I wasn’t organised at all. I didn’t realise you have to film all day and all night for the week, I thought it was just an evening thing and then maybe you’d meet up in the day for the menu review.
“I was cooking on the Wednesday so I was thinking to myself: ‘Okay I’ll nip over to Morrisons on Monday and Tuesday’ but it took so much time I had to give my mum and my dad my bank card to get my shopping for me.”
Claire said she decided to serve her food on planks, which she bought from Homesense in Llanishen, after being inspired by a meal she had at Las Iguanas in Cardiff city centre.
She said: “When I was living in Cardiff me and my friends were going to Las Iguanas a lot and one particular day we ordered prawns on a plank - basically what I tried to recreate for my starter, which went horribly wrong. When I practised it it was amazing but when I recreated it it was rubbish.
“It was served on planks and I thought that would be brilliant but then I went a bit overboard ordering the dinner ones as well. In my head I thought it was going to be amazing. I had to buy five of them each course.”
But even though it might not have gone totally to plan, with one diner describing the marinated prawn with guacamole starter as “dreadful” and another calling her steak “overcooked”, Claire said she still uses the planks as a nod to her time on the show. She said: “Three years on I can make a good steak so if I make it when a few of my friends or my family come over I’ll serve them on a plank as a little joke. I’ll keep them forever now.”
Although Claire maintains her culinary skills have improved since filming ended, at the time she naively thought, ‘how hard can it be?’ before cooking her steak Americano main.
“I thought I was an all right cook at the time,” she said. “But obviously it’s for five people and it was hard because they all wanted their steak done in different ways. I should have practised it a bit to be honest. Cooking two steaks is okay, you just put them in a frying pan, but I didn’t have enough room to do that with all five.
“I’d also never heard of a blue steak before. I put them all in the oven and hoped for the best!
“When it came to the chips I was thinking: ‘Oh my God this is not going to plan.’ By that point I had used up all my cutlery and all my utensils. I planned to put them in the deep-fat fryer which came with my flat but the camera crew helped me peel so many potatoes that it wasn’t big enough.
“I was panicking - the other contest