A DENTON couple has taken away TV stardom after appearing on a BBC show judging ‘Britain’s Top Takeaways.’
Leah Voellner and Liam Peet could be seen casting their opinion over dishes cooked by a series of restaurants and diners from around the country.
Their big break came after a Facebook page set up during the first lockdown – Tameside Takeaway Connoisseurs – went further than they ever thought it would.
Now after people across the nation saw what they could do when it comes to judging, they have plans to take it even further.
“Liam runs the Facebook group and it blew up, it ended up with more than 10,000 members,” said Leah, who now lives on Fir Road but had scenes filmed when the couple lived in Ashton.
“So producers of the show asked Liam if he wanted to be part of it – the answer was yes straight away.
“We had to go through a couple of interviews to get through and we got picked. Now we want to set up the site as almost like a video blog.
“We’re doing road trips already by heading to the restaurants we tried properly.”
Leah, 25, and Liam, 27, had to wait for their big moment as the show was actually filmed last June and was originally meant to air in January.
And what we saw was not necessarily what the couple got – they have a table for a start after being filmed eating off a tray on their knees.
“We didn’t do too badly but it’s heavily edited,” added Leah, who works as cabin crew on an airline.
“We weren’t as cringy as we thought we would be!
“But we do have a table – we have two and if you count the one in the garden, we have four but producers liked the set up of having like a Gogglebox vibe.
“Now the question, ‘Do you have a table?’ is basically like a Twitter trend.”
“They kept making us eat off the same tray, though, rather than individual trays, which was pretty annoying.”
Electrical engineer Liam added: “The flat we had was quite small, so fit the camera in properly, it was better to do it that way.”
The TV appearance came off the back of the group Liam established, mainly to find some different food to eat.
He said: “I started it in January 2021 and the only thing we had to look forward to was a weekly takeaway – but we always kept getting the same one.
“So I set it up really for recommendations but it just blew up. Next thing, everyone in Tameside seemed to know about it.
“And we’ve been visiting paces we tried. We went to a place called Lucky Man in Chorlton, who we actually put last – but we could order whatever we wanted then.”
On the show, orders get called in to a series of kitchens in Manchester, food is cooked then delivered, eaten and judged.
In reality, though, things took a little longer.
Leah said: “They sent you a link with all the menus from each takeaway and we’d pick a main and a side from each one.
“That would be at 10am and we wouldn’t get it until late!
“All the food came on the same day. It was a lot of food – it was hard work. I was fed up of eating!
“We froze a lot of food and gave a fair bit away. I think I’ve still got curries in my freezer!”
Leah and Liam never did get to meet the show’s host, Sara Cox, in person but just talking to her on Facetime was enough.
“We had a couple of calls,” Leah explained. “Then Darren Harriott, the other comedian on it, came to our house and did some filming,
“But Sara is lovely, she was really nice. She loved us too!”