Estate agent to star in TV reality show

A new star of the estate agency world is born. Or at least he will be next week.

Derek Richardson, of Squarefoot estate agents in Cardiff, will be on a new Channel 5 show every evening next week from Monday through to Friday.

Called ‘The Boss is Coming to Dinner’, it’s a sort of cross between ‘Come Dine with Me’ and ‘The Apprentice’.

Bosses – and Derek is only the third to appear in the series – are wined and dined by prospective employees who not only have to show off their culinary and hosting skills but also have to prove they are right for the job.

Two contestants take part in each evening’s show, with one eliminated each time. In Friday’s final – described by C5 as ‘nerve-shredding’ – the four finalists have to battle it out in a daunting challenge.

Derek tells us he has actually taken the eventual winner on to his staff as a trainee negotiator.

He won’t tell us who it is, of course, but he does reveal that the Friday night challenge involved having to conduct a viewing with an extremely difficult customer.

The eight candidates range from a 19-year-old beauty therapist to a grandmother, a couple of graduates and someone who’s a whiz at selling but not too good at spelling.

He also gets to eat quite a lot of food, including a chilli stir-fry that practically blew his head off.

Anyway, it sounds like fun and it’s on at 6pm.

“It’s going to be my 15 minutes of fame,” said Derek.

Well, we’ll just have to wait and see if he can improve the popularity of estate agents to above that of politicians, traffic wardens and, ahem, journalists.