Getting On Getting The Builders In!

It makes me so happy that lots of you have got in touch to say you’ve enjoyed the new BBC series Getting The Builders In, which TV hubby Jon and I took part in earlier this year. As most of  you regular readers know, it was a tough start to the year for me after my mother passed away in January, and diving headlong into a busy filming schedule was challenging to say the least. Honestly though, I can’t think of a better team to have spent time with.

The show comes across on screen as warm and friendly, with everyone being super supportive and, well, just plain ol’ nice. Sometimes you wonder if that’s real but I promise you it totally was. What a great bunch of people to have spent time with.

The premis of the show is that three teams of two builders compete to win work, all viewing the job on the same day and pricing it up to pitch to the client. There’s a Northern and a Southern contingent, and our Northern lots were just brilliant! We mostly pitched against Tracey & Daz, Chris & Alex and  Mark & Chris, pictured below, but also met the Southerners in London over the summer. How they seem on screen is exactly how they are in real life: engaging, funny and smashing to work with.

At the end of each job, the big L ‘losers’ get to review the work of the winning team – a bit like Goggleboxing a rival’s work – and though we’d all have done things in our own way, it’s clear that the Beeb’s chosen builders are a talented bunch. I’d have any of the teams pictured above working on jobs with me, they were all FAB! Though, clearly, if you’ve watched, you wouldn’t employ Daz too early in the morning 😉

We’d literally be sitting on a building site (above is my kitchen) reviewing the jobs – the sure sign of a busy builder!

We filmed Top Tips, which are scattered in amongst the filmed work to give ideas and handy hints to viewers. Thank goodness for kind cameramen being patient with out brains failing to work properly at the end of long days. Not that I’m saying Jon’s brain is failing below mind. No, that’s not a brain fail face at all…
As we dashed from pitch to pitch and job to job, we weren’t really sure how it would all turn out. Obviously we wanted to do the best we could for our clients on the ones we’d ‘won’, but you never really know how a TV show will pan out ’til it airs. We just got mucky and got on with it! Everyone single builder I’ve spoken to since it started broadcasting is just over the moon to have been involved. That’s great isn’t it?!It’s our final pitch today and I can’t wait to watch! Catch us live at 11am today – Wed 15th Nov – or see us on iPlayer. The link is HERE.

And let me know what you think!