Postcard from... Paris

When Emmanuelle and Rachid Guedidi joined the TV reality show Bienvenue chez nous (welcome to our home) the couple thought they might get some free publicity for their bed and breakfast in the Dordogne.

Little did they imagine that their appearance on TF1, watched by 2.5 million people, would bring a stream of negative comments on social media after they were accused of insulting their competitors.

The programme’s formula is simple: four couples who run B&Bs stay at each others’ property and give their verdict. The Guedidis, who run a four-bedroomed B&B in Cadouin, tried the hospitality in Kembs and Metz in eastern France, and back to Monpazier in the Dordogne, and gave their honest opinion.

“We don’t take back anything we said,” Emmanuelle Guedidi told the newspaper Sud-Ouest. “But what we said was completely transformed. If we said ‘the dish was salty but good’, the edited version only kept ‘the dish was salty’.”

Producer Stéphanie Vola denied that the series was sensationalist and said that “unfortunately, we can’t control everything”.

The Guedidis now say they were “naïve”. But judging by the reaction to other competitors in the series, they might have got off lightly. Two couples have received death threats.