"The Joy of Curry" on BBC2

"Narrated by Neil Morrissey, The Joy Of Curry is a light-hearted celebration and exploration of the British love affair with curry, and how it conquered our hearts, minds and taste buds." (BBC press release)

Nationwide fame for our curry club! It started with an email from the BBC at Pebble Mill, Birmingham on 10 June 2003 saying that they would like to speak to us about a documentary they were going to make - they were interested in how and why our club was formed, how we go about marking restaurants, etc. We thought it was a hoax at first but responded anyway - we didn't want to miss out! After conducting phone interviews with the Webmaster and the President, the BBC decided that they would like to film us on one of our curry nights. It was agreed that we would meet in the King's Stores (Spitalfields) and then go to the nearby Eastern Spice for our outing on 26 June.

The BBC sent down what they called a "small crew" to film us - just the five of them! They set up a camera in the pub and filmed our hopefully slightly-less-boring-than-normal conversation. They then set up outside and filmed interviews with Mark and Jon. Then onto the restaurant for lots of shots of us eating curry, drinking beer and talking rubbish.

Recognising our star quality, the BBC wanted to get some footage of us 'cruising' Brick Lane so, a couple of weeks later, we were out again (wearing the same clothes as before!). Lots of acting was involved this time: walking towards the camera, walking away from the camera, walking with the camera - it was ever so draining, darling! Naturally, after this, we went for a curry and the BBC filmed us in that restaurant too.

The programme went out on Wednesday, 29 October 2003. Although the proposed feature on our curry club ended up on the cutting room floor, there were plenty of shots of us in background throughout the programme ... and we didn't get shown up as a bunch of sad gits so, all in all, it was a great success. And, by the way, the programme was very informative and enjoyable!

Read our report to see what we thought of our meal.