Come Dine With Me star dishes up on experiences on show and cooking prowess

A Wolverhampton TV personality and influencer has spoken of his cooking prowess, long days filming and meeting new people as part of filming for a popular Channel 4 show.

Levi Shaun-Ashley Williams put his cooking skills to the test as part of Come Dine With Me, which features five amateur chefs who live in the same town or area and who each host a three-course dinner party for the other contestants at their own home over successive episodes. 

Each competitor then rates the host's food and hosting skills during the taxi journey home, with the highest-scoring chef winning £1,000 cash at the end of the five-episode cycle, with Mr Williams set to appear on screen at the beginning of next year.

The 33-year-old said he had previously appeared on several TV programmes before, with the most recent being Celebs Go Dating, and spoke about how he ended up on Come Dine With Me.

He said: "I got approached to do Come Dine With Me and applied like everyone else, but as I've been in the industry a bit, I got moved up a few stages and ended up in the final stage.

"I then got the call to come on in April and we filmed it in July, with it set to be broadcast at the start of next year."

Mr Williams said he was a regular viewer of the show, describing it as "good teatime viewing", and said he also loved cooking, having properly taken it up during one of the Covid-19 lockdowns.

He said: "I started cooking during lockdown when there wasn't really much else to do, then I posted it on my social media and I got quite a following from the cooking, then my friends suggested I should apply for Come Dine With Me.

"My menu for the show was barbecue honey chicken wings with a homemade ranch dip for starters, Cajun stuffed salmon with a garlic pasta for the main, then a chocolate, melt-in-the-middle fudge cake with cream and strawberries to finish.

"Not a lot of people have heard of stuffed salmon, so I think it might be a Levi invention, but I really like it and everyone loved it."

While Mr Williams said he couldn't give too much away about the show, he said that the other contestants were based in Lichfield, Wednesbury and Birmingham and also found that he knew two of the other contestants, having worked with them previously.

He said the experience had been a good one, if a bit tiring, and he'd opened up more as the show had gone on.

He said: "It was a really good experience as you get to meet people you wouldn't normally meet in everyday life and you just don't know who is being genuine and who's just there for money, so you're still trying to work people out while being friendly at the same time.

"I've done TV before and there have been long days, but this was really long, 12-hour days for five days in a row, so you're taking the whole week off work and it gives you a lot of time to see how people's true characters come out as the week goes on.

"The closer to the end it got, the more you could see people really want the money as it's £1,000, a lot of money, but it was overall a pleasurable experience.

"Looking at it, I know I was cast as the outspoken person who isn't afraid to ask questions and probe on things, but I think I was fair with my questions and I was quiet to begin with, trying to work people out, but as the week goes on, you see the real me come out, which they were really surprised by."