Fred Sirieix has admitted he hesitated taking the Channel 4 job (Picture: Ken McKay/ITV/Shutterstock)
First Dates star Fred Sirieix has admitted he had concerns before taking the maitre d’ job on the beloved Channel 4 programme.
The 51-year-old has fronted 19 seasons of the programme over nearly ten years, joined by the likes of Merlin Griffiths and Cici Coleman.
But, he wasn’t convinced to take on the job when he first heard about it, and wanted guests on the show to be depicted fairly.
Fred revealed: ‘I was always very conscious of what I would be entering into.
‘I didn’t want to be on the television for the sake of being on television.
‘I wanted to make sure nobody was going to be made to look bad.’
He continued to The Mirror: ‘I wouldn’t say I had second thoughts, it’s just that you don’t want to jump in with two feet when you don’t know.
‘I wanted to make sure nobody was going to be made to look bad.’ (Picture: Channel 4/Dave King)
‘I want to know the people I am working with had a clear vision and that their values are aligned with mine. Life is short.
‘It took me a while to decide. I had so many different meetings and a lot of considerations. Thankfully it was genuine and authentic, and people love it.’
This comes after Fred told Metro.co.uk that after ten years of filming First Dates, he ‘can’t believe’ how long the show has been going on.
‘We’ve been working together for so long now. It’s 10 years this year,’ he told us.
‘It speaks volumes about the popularity of the show, but the reason for the popularity of the show is because it’s good at heart, and the intentions are pure, and we are there because we really want to match people and make sure that they find the person that they are looking for, and that’s why people like it.
Fred and Merlin have starred on the show for nearly a decade (Picture: @merlinfdc4)
‘It’s genuine. This is a real dating show on television.’
He added: ‘The show is about people who want to live the rest of their life together, who want to fall in love and who want to have a connection, you know, it’s about that sense of trust, which is what we’re going for, you know, it’s about the real thing.
‘It’s difficult, not everybody is going to succeed, but the one thing that people know is that when they come to the First Dates restaurant, is that if it doesn’t work, with us we have tried, we’ve tried everything, we really do our utmost to match people to perfection.
‘And the thing is, it’s down to chemistry, something that you can’t engineer. You can engineer the match but not the chemistry.’
First Dates is available to watch on All4.
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‘It took me a while to decide.’
