It was a cold, winters day when Alice from the BBC telephoned me. She said she was looking for people to take part in a forthcoming documentary series about people and their pets. Would I be interested in auditioning? Of course, I said ‘yes’!

By JULIE WHEELER

The very next day, the BBC 2 film crew (based in Cardiff) arrived at our house in Altrincham, Cheshire, to interview my husband Gordon, myself and most importantly UK Gr Pr Yankidoodle Silver Confeti (Candy) and Supreme UK Gr Pr Yankidoodle Fairy Dust (Floss). All went well that first day so the crew returned the following day, for our ‘second audition’.

About a week later, Alice telephoned us to say that we had been chosen to ‘star’ in one of the programmes, which would form part of the series for their documentary. Actually, I think the success in passing the audition, was due to Candy and Floss’s talents, rather than Gordon or mine! We were so excited to be chosen as, apparently, over 300 people had originally applied to take part. We had not even applied ourselves; the invitation was down to Alice - who had heard about our cats!



TV Star Sisters - UK Gr Pr Yankidoodle Silver Confeti (left) and Supreme UK Gr Pr Yankidoodle Fairy Dust (right)

Our first day of filming took place on Good Friday - the night before we were due to show Candy, at the Preston & Blackpool Cat Club show. The crew then stayed overnight in a local hotel and the next morning they arrived on our doorstep at 6am, to accompany us to the show. We were filmed all day at the show and even when Gordon and I took a walk along Blackpool promenade, the cameras kept on rolling! By this time, we had started to forget about wearing our hidden microphones and we laughingly fancied that we were becoming quite ‘professional’!

Over the following weeks of continued filming, we spent many happy and very interesting hours with the crew. We enjoyed every minute of it – including the shooting of a ‘bedroom scene’! In addition to being filmed at home and in our local area, the crew took us ‘on location’ to London and Berkshire - with Candy and Floss in the leading roles! The filming stretched to about 70 hours of taped footage and this was then condensed down to just 30 minutes worth of TV viewing.

The whole experience was actually quite tiring but the fun we had made it all worthwhile. The cats enjoyed it too - they have never been groomed so much…they really could have done with their own ‘make up artists’! There were many ‘magic moments’ to look back on and treasure. Candy and Floss behaved perfectly; played up to the cameras and relished all the attention lavished on them. The crew told us they behaved like real ‘STARS’.

We are looking forward to seeing the programme (it is due to be screened by BBC 2, in September) and I am confident that the cats will look glamorous. However, I’m not sure how their owners will look!

Would we do it all again? The answer is most definitely YES!