On 19th February 2013, I appeared on the popular BBC 3 documetary series Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents. The show averages over 1 million viewers per episode making it one of the most viewed digital shows on television. As a result of this, I have had a lot of feedback about my appearance on twitter.

Overwhelmingly, the main thing I get asked is something along the lines of: “How did you not know that you were on the show?” And this is the question I’m going to address in this blog post.

Firsty, I have to say that me and my mates weren’t completely oblivious to what we were letting ourselves in for.

Sometime in May 2012, I applied for a BBC show called ‘The Big Vacation’. It offered the chance for 18-20 year olds to go abroad (with flights and accomodation paid for) and advertised it as a show where Britain would essentially compete against the rest of Europe to show who has the most fun abroad.

Due to SSSP being a show I was familiar with, and with my journalistic scepticism, I thought that Big Vacation was very likely to be SSSP. However the chance of a free holiday with three of my closest friends was one I couldn’t turn down. I also didn’t imagine in a million years that I’d actually get picked by the producers to appear on it anyway.

A few days after I sent my application form, I received a call from a casting producer. They spoke to me on the phone for over an hour and I gauged from their reaction to what I was saying and the fact the call was so long, that I’d impressed them.

This was confirmed when I got a call back and they said they wanted to come to my house to film me and my friends so that they could show the commissioner what I was about.

A couple of weeks after they’d been to my house, I got another call telling me that the commissioner loved us and that they wanted to send us to Ayia Napa in 12 days time. This was very short notice and none of us really could collect much spending money in that time so two of my original friends dropped out and luckily two others stepped in.

2 days before we were due to leave, they came and filmed the scenes with me, my mum and David at our house. This scenes are quite staged as they have to make a TV show and they have to exagerate how much my mother does for me, but the end result is essentially me, my mum and David acting to an extent.

I have to emphasise, the show is not completely staged but they are making a TV show at the end of the day. We get asked different questions, a few times over, dressed up differently each time until they get a response they are happy with. Then editing happens which alters how certain things can appear.

One thing that people don’t realise is that the camera crew are basically with us all the time, stay in the same hotel as us and basically become our friends by the end of the week. Also, myself and one of my other friends was fitted with a microphone pack at all times when we were out. As well as having security with us.

To be shown on the show, people have to sign a release form. If they don’t, then they can still be shown but with their face blurred out. Also, we were only allowed to film in certain clubs. Clubs such as Aqua were off limits and this is why we tended to go home earlier than we would have liked. We also get told when to move on from clubs and we had certain clubs we had to visit, if my mum was there watching for example. This could sound suspicious but it is quite easy to manipulate a drunken bunch of teenagers.

Something else that people didn’t realise is that there were shootings on the first night and our security was upped because of this. Also when the girls got kicked out of there hotel and had to go to Paphos, there was talk of the whole show being cancelled. It also almost got cancelled as early as arriving at Larnaca airport. Our flight was delayed which meant we were roughly half an hour from being in the airport at the same time as my mum.

Finally, despite the abuse I have received for the episode on twitter, I have received very good feedback as well and I am very happy I took part in the show. It was an amazing experience and although I’m not delighted with the edit, I can’t praise the crew we worked with highly enough as they were all fantastic.