Appearing on James Martin Saturday Kitchen

It seems very surreal writing a blog about appearing on James Martin Saturday Kitchen. 

In early September, I had the incredible opportunity to appear via Zoom on James Martin’s Saturday Kitchen — a prime-time Saturday morning TV show!
The episode aired on 6th September, so if you missed it, you can still catch it on BBC iPlayer.

The segment had been pre-recorded two weeks before the broadcast, and I hadn’t seen the final edit until it went live. After a busy day trading at the Bovey Food Festival, I finally got home, sat down to watch it, and couldn’t believe how long the feature was — they had kept almost everything we filmed!

It was such an amazing experience and a huge moment for small South West producers like us. I’m incredibly proud to see so many of our local products being showcased and celebrated on national TV.

We were first contacted back in March, and honestly, I wasn’t sure if it was genuine at first — it seemed too good to be true!

But it turned out to be completely real. Even more exciting, they reached out to us after discovering West Country Olives through our social media and website.

We sent samples of our olives initially for them to be taste tasted by the James Martin team and the feedback was amazing, really positive and they confirmed they definitely wanted us to appear on the show .

It took quite a few months from the initial contact to filming but it was well worth the wait. 

Filming

On the day of filming, we began with a quick test run before the actual shoot. This was when I ‘virtually’ met James Martin for the first time, along with guest chef Ronnie Murray.

Both James and Ronnie were incredibly easy to talk to and instantly made me feel at ease. Before filming started, we had a short chat so I could get a sense of how the show would run and when the filming would cut to me.

James mentioned beforehand that he’d be blitzing the Nocellara olives with their stones still in. When it came to filming, the noise from the blender was so loud that not much conversation could happen during that part!

Once things got going, the conversation flowed naturally and felt very relaxed. Ronnie showed a genuine interest in our process — from receiving the olives to producing our flavoured varieties.

At one point during filming, Ronnie started tasting different olives and, without me realising, he grabbed a Hot Chilli Olive. I would have warned him if I’d seen — they’ve got quite a kick! It turns out that part didn’t make the final cut, as the heat seemed to catch him off guard. I didn’t see much of his reaction since the camera moved away, but it was clear the spice hit him pretty hard!

The actual filming seemed to go really quickly and then it was over, it was such an incredible experience that it felt like abit of a come down afterwards. 

Saturday 6th September  -The day it aired

On Saturday 6th September what we had filmed two weeks prior aired, just after 9:30am the first part of the show. I was actually a Bovey Food Festival selling our olives on that day so I didn’t watch it live. But as we got into the afternoon at the food festival we had customers starting to recognise me and the olives and had watched the show that morning! That was a very strange feeling.

While we were at the food festival and while it was airing on ITV, the online orders began flooding in. I have access to the email on my mobile and there was so many orders, it felt quite overwhelming. 

Monday 9th September – Picking and packing orders

I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to watch the final edited version, but when I got home from the food festival I was made to watch it. I am glad I did and I was pleased overall with the end result. 

We had received nearly 200 orders over the weekend, so Monday was a busy day getting everything sent out. We had a great production line going on, double and triple checking orders.
A quick thank you to everyone who has supported us and to all the new customers who ordered olives from watching us on the show, it really is appreciated.