The unmistakable voice behind the Come Dine With Me camera – Dave Lamb – tells Gina Schauffer what he really thinks of the cult show that highlights dinner party disasters across the country
Everyone tells me my voice is different from what I do on the programme. It’s become more and more camp and ridiculous... I get overexcited now. But if you listen to the earlier episodes, it’s really quite flat and 'normal'. They, quite rightly, reined me in early on, because if you go from nought to 60 straight away it's a bit too much! So we've gradually worked our way up. The difference between the early series and now is marked.
I read from a script, but I'm allowed to improvise around the script. So I watch it, and if something occurs to me to say that’s not on the script I just say it. And the producer will then either go 'alright we’ll keep that' or we go back and do what's meant to be on the page. I watch it [the show] for the first time, I sight read the script and then do it [the voiceover], so I'm reacting as an audience member. I watch it like a viewer, and that's kind of the feel we go for.
Yes, I think that's why, because I never know who's going to win; I kind of discover it as it goes along. I’ll either read it [the script] or - because I’m watching and listening as I go along - if I react differently, I’ll try something different and the producer will either say 'OK we’ll go with that' or 'get back in there and stop swearing' which is normally what happens! There’s some real filth on the cutting room floor... It's good fun, and if you can have a laugh doing it, that's part of the job really.
I really warm to people; you really take an instant like or dislike to people as you’re doing it. It’s a difficult one, because you've got to be aware of what the viewers are going to be thinking and you don’t want to go against that, so you don’t want to be nasty if no-one's deserved it. Quite often, the producers have spent 5 days with these people and some of them have got really hacked off with some of these guys over the 5 days, so when they come to write the scripts at the end, they're already furious on day 1. So I come into it and go 'why are we so angry with this person, we don’t know who they are'! Or sometimes I feel we can go for people when they’ve been lovely to them.
Not that I've been told of, but I do feel like they might protect me from things like that! The producers might have had to wrestle with some angry contestants on occasion, so they try to keep all that away from me.
Find out who cooks in Dave Lamb's house
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