In the early days of reality television, I would get emails about contestant callouts. In 2005, one arrived entitled Country Pub. It offered a “life-changing” opportunity for couples to compete on a new daytime show to run a pub. I was working as a musician in London and the idea of chatting to locals and pulling pints in the countryside was romantic.
My partner, Monia, and I procrastinated until the night before the deadline when, slightly tipsy, I filled in the application, trying to be witty in an effort to stand out. I must have done something right because we were invited to a filmed interview. I was 30 and Monia was 25. The production team were looking for two couples to run the pub for two weeks each. As the narrator said when it aired: “The couple who do best will leave their old life behind and become the new landlord and landlady.”
A few days later, the producer came to our flat. I was getting quite excited, but at Christmas I got a call to say we weren’t going to be taken on and would be kept on the reserve list. We forgot all about it. But a few months later we were told the first couple had pulled out and they wanted us to step in. We had to come up with a theme and decided on a music pub serving Italian food.
As we drove to the Royal Oak, in Plymouth, I could see the sea; it really sold the dream. The pub was on Hooe Lake; the clientele were a mixed bag but the place was beautiful. It was intense and tiring – the film crew arrived when we woke and stayed till last orders – but we knew what we were letting ourselves in for. We even sat the British Institute of Innkeepers exam to get our licences before filming began.
Early on, they pushed us into a big storyline about making the pub non-smoking (this was before the ban, in 2007). It went down like a lead balloon. The first shot you saw of me was opening up the pub with two blokes complaining. We had only a fortnight to prove ourselves. We’d go to the cash-and-carry in the mornings, we had staff to manage, and we stayed up late preparing stuff. I’ve never worked so hard, but it felt great.
On voting night, we met our rivals, Jamie and Rachel. There was a panel of industry professionals, and the regulars cast ballots for their favourite couple, overseen by the local vicar. We won. There was – possibly thanks to the magic of TV – only one vote in it. I was elated.
Off camera, the reality of the situation was becoming clearer. We were told by the production team that the lease, in fact, belonged to someone else. Towards the end of filming, we were presented with a contract offering us employment – by him – as pub managers for a combined salary of £18,000 plus accommodation and an unspecified share of profits. We wanted it so badly that we agreed. We returned to London for a month and packed up our lives.
The show – called Nobody’s Inn – went out on ITV a couple of months later, in June 2006, while we were resident in the pub. Friends and family tuned in, as well as millions of students and retired people.
I suspected, from the leaseholder’s attitude, that he never wanted us there – and we wanted to run a pub by ourselves. Inevitably, we clashed. I was effectively just another employee and reached breaking point when the leaseholder sent me to work behind the bar at another of his venues.Seven months in, we handed in our notice. Our last evening was really sad; all the locals turned out to say goodbye and a few even shed tears.
By then, we had found somewhere else – a lovely real-ale pub in Aylesbury – and moved there at Christmas 2006. It was everything we wanted the original experience to be: we even won a Campaign for Real Ale award. In 2009, we moved to Monia’s village, near Bologna, Italy, where the local bar was up for sale. We weren’t looking to move again, but the opportunity was right. We still run it, and we keep in touch with some of the locals from Plymouth.
The dream we were sold might have gone sour, but we wouldn’t be where we are now without a few months behind the bar of Nobody’s Inn.
• As told to Deborah Linton.
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