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ITV Loose Women - Find Sherrie a Man - Part 1 |
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Dating Britain's principal John Hunt wins the
competition. |
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Here
is the story of how John won this fabulous
completion to win a date with former Coronation
Street actress Sherrie Hewson. |
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Entry. It was back in May 2011 that I was
working at my desk and heard the word 'dating'
mentioned on Loose Women. I generally work alone and
have the TV on in the background as a bit of
company, like many of you do I'm sure. |
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On
this day I had Loose Women on in the background and
immediately stopped what I was doing to listen to
the Loose Women girls tell the viewers about a
competition they had started to find one of their
fellow panellists Sherrie Hewson a man. |
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The
winner was to go on a lunch date with the lovely
Sherrie aboard the Orient Express. Well, this was
all I needed to hear and rushed to send in my
application video. |
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The
final 25. A couple of weeks later I was
contacted by ITV and told that I'd made the final
25. This was exciting news and I was to wait to hear
from them as to what the next stage of the
competition would be. |
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The
Final 10. It was around the end of June that I
got a phone call to say that I was in the final 10
and that ITV would like me to come up to London to
appear 'live' on Loose women, where the final 10
guys would all 'speed date' Sherrie with the final 3
staying overnight to go on a longer date to London
zoo. |
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The initial show was
cancelled and rearranged for Thursday 21st July 2011. |
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The 'live'
semi-final. The day had at last arrived, I was up at 6.30 and my
son kindly drove me to the station to catch the train to Paddington.
Upon arrival I was collected by a rather nice chauffeur driven Merc
and taken to the Loose Women studios. At the studio I met up with my
fellow competitors, our numbers had been reduced to 6, so I can only
assume there was a problem with the other 4. |
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Each of us was asked
to do a short recording that would be shown as a 'behind the scenes'
video on the ITV website. That short peace of filming calmed my
nerves and by the time the
speed dating started I felt quit relaxed. |
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After the speed dating, me and my fellow contestants
waited in the 'green room' before being called into
the studio where Sherrie chose her 3 finalist.
Sherrie opened a gold envelope and in true showbiz
fashion announced the finalists in 'no particular
order'. Thankfully mine was the first name to be
called, so I didn't have to go through too much
tension, phew!. And the
three finalists were
myself, Terry and Lawrence. We three were to go to
London zoo with Sherrie, each of us to date her for
half an hour. |
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London zoo. We took a break for lunch, a quick
change of shirt and off we went to
London zoo. Once there we each took it in turns
to 'date' Sherrie with me going first. Sherrie,
myself and the crew trekked off to the monkey
enclosure where we fed these gorgeous little
monkeys. It was just so hot, with a 'wet' atmosphere
which the monkeys love, not so great for us humans
though lol. Outside again Sherrie and I had our
first real opportunity to get to know each other.
More filming took place of us chatting and then it
was time for the other guys to take their turn. We
were at the zoo for three hours and I have to say
the whole experience so far had been fascinating.
Very happy to get through to the final and looking
forward to getting home. The usual car (getting used
to it now lol) turned up to take me to Paddington
station where I caught the 6 o'clock train back to
Taunton. I'd turned my phone off all day because it
plays havoc with microphones and when I turned it on
again on the train, it went ballistic. I've never
seen so many texts on a phone before. To say I was
flattered by all the support would be a huge
understatement. It took me the whole 2 hour journey
to go through them all, just incredible. |
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8
days until the live final. What an amazing 8
days this was. I'd only appeared on 'live' TV for a
few minutes and yet already I was being recognised
in the street. All very surreal and a little
strange. |
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Public vote.
It had been decided to let the nation vote for who
would win the competition and the date with Sherrie
on the Orient Express. OMG, I had no idea whether or
not the public liked me and certainly no idea if
they'd take the trouble to vote for me. |
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I
decided to read the comments made by the viewers on
Loose Women's Facebook page and wow!!! I simply
couldn't believe how lovely most of the comments
were. Things like, "if Sherrie doesn't want John
I'll have him", "John to win" and "John is such a
nice man", there were 100's similar to this. It felt
like I was reading about someone else. I know I've
used the word 'surreal' before, but believe me
surreal is the only way I can describe it. |
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If
you've viewed any of the footage, you'll know that
my main hobbies are Jive dancing and Tennis. Both
interests have generated many friends and
acquaintances over the years and how brilliantly
they supported me. My personal
Facebook page
exploded into life, with 100s of messages of
congratulations. So many voted for me and asked
their friends to vote too. My local Jive club,
Riviera LeRoc were absolutely brilliant, publicaly
congratulating me and asking their members to 'vote
John'. Thank you so much Gary and Holly (Riviera LeRoc, Taunton) for your support. |
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As the
days went by, I started to get a little nervous
about the outcome and at the same time was really
excited over the prospect of maybe winning and
spending a day on the Orient Express with the
lovely Sherrie Hewson. |
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Click here to read about the Final + Sherrie and
John's trip on the Orient Express >>> |
