I could not believe my eyes. "Dot..." I shouted with an edge of panic in my voice. A few moments later she opened the door to the office and peaked inside. I gestured for her to come in with a frown on my face. "Come in, you weirdo. This isn't exactly my domain."

"Wassup?" After I gestured for her to do so, she came in and sat on my lap.

"So you know we've had a few people cook with us on In The Pan?"

"Yeah..."

"It has garnered the attention of a pretty well known and well respected chef. Not to mention my mum loves him to bits. Have a look at this comment and who it is."

"It says it's chef Tom Kerridge. Addressing us, 'I love your channel and your sense of fun. Would love to come and join you.' Whoa! A proper chef?"

"A Michelin starred chef! How do we contact him?" We both thought hard about it and I could see Dianne had a lightbulb moment the same time I did. It was quite comical to see.

"I've got an idea!"

"Do you want to go on a date with me?"

"You know... I think we've got the same idea. Go to one of his restaurants and hope he's there?"

"We might need to book a table though. Wait, I think he has a pub. Let's have a look at the website..."

"Hang on a minute. Do you think he might have sent us an instagram message? It's worth a look." We both shrugged and looked at the inbox for our In The Pan Food instagram, and...

"I can't believe it," Dianne said quietly, with a slightly hysterical laugh. There it was, amongst all the fan messages, cheftomkerridge with a verified tick had messaged. "We need to set up a date."

"I honestly cannot believe it. We're going to branch out to the professional world of cooking..." Then something dawned on me. "We're going to be so out of our depths." Dianne laughed in response.

"It's gonna be like a good training exercise. See how many tips we can give him!" I snorted.

"Think how much we're going to improve."

"I mean I don't think anyone can trump our very own Gorka Marquez. He was brilliant."

"Are you joking? This is a Michelin starred chef we're talking about. No offense to Gorka, but I think Tom Kerridge trumps him."

~—~

"Ladies and Gentlemen. Today we have a very special guest who, quite frankly, Dianne and I never thought we'd introduce. Dianne?"

"What?" I gestured for her to take over. "Oh... yeah... that's right."

I sighed in defeat when I realised Dianne wasn't going to introduce him. "Come in, Tom."

He came in and Dianne finally said, "It's only Tom Kerridge!"

"Wahayyy. She said it finally." I brought her close to me and kissed her on the head.

"Welcome to the show. Welcome to our lives."

"Thank you for having me." He looked into the camera (must be really practised at this) and said. "I've really been looking forward to this. Can't wait for getting some tips from you." Dianne looked over at me, gloating.

Before she had a chance to say anything, I said, "Now, before we go any further, what shall we call you—chef or Tom?"

"Call me Tom. Let's make it relaxed."

"Thank you." both Dianne and I said. Dianne turned to the camera and said, "Going back to the subject of tips, when Joe and I first got Tom's message, I said to Joe he's gonna want some tips from us. Did I or did I not?" I opened my mouth to object. "Did I or did I not?"

"Yeah. You did say something along those lines," I muttered under my breath.

"Sorry, Joe? What was that?"

"Al-right, Di-anne. You were right. Happy now?"

"Yes. Now I'm sure Tom didn't come here to hear you groveling."

"Not at all, Dianne. It's all part of the fun."

"Exactly. Now Tom... is going to... make something... that looks amazing, sounds amazing and is probably going to be amazing. What's it called, Tom?"

"It's a three-boned rib of beef and it's just gonna be flavoured with some herbs and spices, and served with gravy. It's one I looked up on the archives, and I'm really excited to cook it with you guys."

"It looks like you've been on TV before, Tom," I said with a cheeky smile. He laughed with me.

"So which items have you bought for us?" he asked and I went through the list of all the ingredients, telling everyone what they were.

"I had to search high and low for this joint of meat. In the end I had to go to a butchers and found it there."

"That's brilliant. I can't stress enough how important it is to support your local butcher. That's one of the reasons I picked this recipe and asked for this joint of meat."

"Because you can't easily find it in the supermarkets?"

"Exactly. Plus it tastes proper lush."

"I see you've got a bag of your own, Tom."

"I have. Can you guess what I have in here?" he asked us both. I had a thinking face on.

"I wonder what it could be." I knew what was in there.

"Oh! I know what's in there!" Dianne piped up. She knew what was in there too. "A model avocado and carrot." Both Tom and I laughed.

"I think the bag would be much smaller, Dianne."

"Not really. He could have other things, bigger things, along with the model avo and carrot."

"Sorry, Dianne. I don't have those. Do you want to have a guess, Joe?"

"You've got some kitchen gadgets, and other stuff."

"Yeah!!!!!!!" We started cooking at this point and it was really enjoyable. I was the sous chef and apparently that made Dianne commis chef. It scared me a lot because much of the preparation fell to Dianne, and quite frankly, there's barely any episode where Dianne doesn't make me scared witless by the way she uses a knife.

"Did you know my dad is a butcher back in Oz?"

"I did, yes. You said it in one of these episodes, didn't you? Or one of your vlogs."

"Check him out!" I said to the camera. "Doing his research." We each high fived Tom.

"How many shows do you reckon you've done, Tom?"

"I seriously have no idea. I've got my own ones, then there's Saturday Kitchen I've made an appearance in. Then one-offs like Masterchef, so no idea."

The preparation of it all didn't take that long at all, so once the meat was in the oven, the four of us basically had a few hours to kill. So after cleaning up and leaving behind the ingredients and equipment for the gravy, Dianne suggested we do some TikTok challenges.

"Have you heard of it before? It's a really good work out, you know." Oh no. She's obsessed with it. I wonder how long it'll take for her to get bored of it. She probably won't have time for it during her time at strictly. We'll see.

"I've seen your videos on it but haven't tried it yet."

"As you've seen, it's hard work. She's a really good choreographer, though, isn't she?"

"She's incredible. I guess that's the reason she's a professional on Strictly Come Dancing, right? How are you feeling about this series, Dianne?"

"I'm feeling good about it. I might get a chance to teach my partner some TikTok moves." I internally facepalmed myself. Dianne had already found out who her partner was, and by the time this episode goes out, we'll all know who he is. In the meantime, though, Dianne wouldn't tell us who he is.

"As part of your warm up."

"Good thinking, Tom! We're a great partnership. I give you tips on cooking and you give me tips about dance." She furrowed her eyebrows in concentration then said, "I can make a separate video for this." I'm so lucky to have a girlfriend who takes an active interest in my job and has even gone a step further. Not for the first time I've thought to myself I'm so proud of her. I know I tend to say it a lot, but it's completely and utterly true.

I was startled out of my thoughts by a pat on my back. "Joe, you're making heart eyes at your girlfriend," he said softly with a smile on his face. I nodded at him in agreement. I'm not even afraid of telling anyone about it. And that's what I did.

"I'm so proud of her. She's perfect for me." I gestured to her vlogging her intro.

"Come on, Tom. Let's do it!"

After doing the cradle challenge and then making one up especially for Tom, we got back to cooking. We made the glaze and the gravy.

When I put in the mustard into the glaze mixture, I asked Tom, "Can you cut the mustard, Tom? With this dish, I mean." I laughed in my usual way.

"I hope so! It is my job."

"I should be asking you that, Joseph."

"Of course I do. You've implied it yourself."

"Speaking of cutting the mustard... Dianne, can you put in the meat again and watch it whilst it's properly getting the glaze? The treacle in it will make it burn really easily, so it'll only take a little while before you'll have to take it out.

"So Tom? With your pub and other restaurants, what's your actual job description?"

"I'm really expected to handle the business side of it, but I do work closely with my sous chef about the menu and other culinary things. But most of the cooking is left to the sous chef. It's all about good communication and love for food."

"Is that why you chose to do these TV series?" I asked. "It doesn't sound like you're not expected to do much cooking. Is that right?"

"Partly." He told us about the different causes he's helped in recent times and I could tell he loved people as much or more than he loves food. It was a pleasure working with him. We were interrupted by the entrance of the rib of beef.

"That smells amazing. I can't wait to try it." Whilst we let it rest, we made the gravy and I panicked when it looked really gloopy.

"I can't do it! Look at it, I've done it wrong!" I backed away from it and let Tom take over.

"It's alright. It's supposed to look like that. Here, this will make it look more like gravy." He poured boiling water into it, and he was right. I gave an audible sigh of relief.

We served up and rated it. Both of us agreed that was worth ten out of ten cows. Dianne said the meat was cooked perfectly thanks to the glaze. I added the gravy was brilliant, but that was thanks to Tom's intervention.

Lastly we asked producer Josh how many cows out of ten he would give this. He said nine because what we had was beautifully cooked, but he took off one cow because he likes to have Yorkshire puddings with beef and gravy.

"You didn't quite cut the mustard there, Tom. Sorry producer Josh is so particular."

"I'll take it. He's a man that knows what he likes."