Take Me Out contestants have slammed the ITV dating show, accusing its producers of telling them who to choose on each episode.

Take Me Out sees Paddy and his army of female contestants pick Mr Right (Picture: ITV)

Take Me Out, hosted by Paddy McGuinness, came under fire from both male and female contestants on the show, which is now in its third series.

Female contestants complained that they were told who to pick by producers and often had to choose men they didn’t find attractive, while some of the show’s male contestants said they went home without a date after the girls were told not to pick them.

‘The whole thing is totally misleading and leaves a whole lot of people feeling humiliated and exploited afterwards,’ one girl who had appeared on the show told the Daily Mirror.




‘The producers pulled some of the girls in and said, “If you’re waiting for George Clooney or Brad Pitt, they’re not coming”,’ she claimed.

VIDEO: Infamous contestant Damion Merry gets a date..sort of

‘They told us to keep our lights on for the next contestant, who was more than 10 years younger than me. I refused and was taken off.’

Another female contestant on the show said that Take Me Out producers had told her and the other girls to reject certain men even if they liked them, because it would ‘make better television’.

Some male contestants claimed women were ordered not to pick them (Picture: ITV)

She said: ‘I really fancied a bloke on my first week on the show, he was just my type, but the producers made it quite clear I wasn’t to pick him and he left without a date.’It’s a shame because in the end he went away feeling a fool for going on the show.’

The girl in question said she ended up going on a date with a man she wasn’t interested in because of the set-up orchestrated by Take Me Out bosses.

The show regularly attracts ratings of around 5m on a Saturday night (Picture: ITV)

Fortunately for her, she was able to get in contact with the man she had liked originally from the show and the two began dating soon afterwards.

Take Me Out makers Talkback Thames denied the claims made by some contestants, saying: ‘We strongly refute any claims that we tell the contestants how to act or how to respond – turning a light on or off is entirely up to individual choice.’