A SOUTH Somerset bed and breakfast is set to appear in the new season of Channel 4’s Four in A Bed national television competition against three other B&B businesses in the South West region.

The Crown & Victoria Inn in Tintinhull will appear in the show, televised over five episodes, which sees four bed and breakfast owners host one another, and at the end of their stay, rate one another’s hospitality skills.

At the end of the week, they all sit down to talk through their feedback - both the positive and the negative, with one bed and breakfast owner being crowned the winner.

Owner of The Crown & Victoria Inn, Surinder Hothi-Bellamy, only purchased the property at the end of April 2022 to provide a bed and breakfast offering for the customers of her other award-winning food events business, which is a winner of The Federation of Small Business’ ‘Family Business of The Year South West’ 2020, and named top eight Indian cookery courses in the UK, by Olive magazine.

A spokesperson said: “When we viewed the Crown & Victoria Inn, it was already empty and came with no existing trade, food stock or room or restaurant bookings.

"We also had the challenge of redecorating all four B&B rooms, but we were ready to take it on.

“Then one day, out of the blue, I received a phone call from Channel 4’s studios asking if we would come on the show – we were quite taken aback and explained that we had only recently taken on the building and were in the process of a complete redecoration.

“However, we were up for the challenge, with only 6 weeks to get the rooms ready for the filming”, said Surinder, who was on the Entrepreneur winners list of 100 females 2022 and a VIP judge at the BBC Radio Somerset ‘Make a difference’ Awards 2022 and first-round judge in 2023.

“Filming the show was great fun, though the days were long”, said Safia Hothi-Bellamy, Surinder’s daughter and business partner who accompanied her on the show.

“The other contestants and their businesses were all really different, but we all got along well, though the payment day was not what we expected.

“All I can say is that it’s very difficult to predict the outcome and I’m sure that viewers will have a hard time working out the winner.”

Four in a Bed is a Channel 4 TV Show where four sets of B&B owners host each other at their establishments and judge the hospitality and venue, and compete to be labelled the best value B&B of the week, at the end they find out what the guests have paid and the closest to 100 per cent wins the prize.

The Crown & Victoria Inn will appear on the show on Monday, October 23.