The sacrifices that our editorial team here at Inside Croydon make for you, our faithful reader. For the third night running, we’ve giving up half an hour of our lives, which we’ll never get back, to watch Channel 4’s Come Dine With Me‘s adventure in Croydon, just so that you don’t have to…

And to be perfectly frank, it’s all a little bit dull. Tonight we were round at what looked to be the smart detached South Croydon house of Vanessa D’Souza, who somewhat immodestly promised to hold “a normal, refined, posh dinner party”, where she would serve “sort of Michelin-star standard food”.

And what’s more, she really pulled it off, even scoring a 10 from one of her guests.

It’s unlikely that D’Souza’s posh nosh was quite up to a Michelin-star restaurant, but it looked pretty good nonetheless, and she lavished what seemed to be a decent selection of wines (was that Majestics on the Limpsfield Road we spotted her shopping at?), even if she was inclined to be a little pretentious about it. Above all else, when faced with an emergency before the main course, she proved herself to be an outstanding hostess as she sacrificed her own meal in the interests of one of her guests.

Two of the Croydon guests have been vegetarian, creating an additional challenge for the omnivorous hosts, who duly provide a vegetarian option when cooking; have you noticed how vegetarians rarely cook a meat option when they play host?

Tonight, D’Souza’s veggie option was so carbohydrate heavy (“carbocide”, she called it herself), that one of her veggie guests, Robert Preston, declared that he fancied having the medallion of beef for his main. Apparently, he does not eat animals that make him laugh. Has he never heard of the Laughing Cow?

With only three pieces of beef ordered, D’Souza swung into action in the kitchen, and rustled up an additional portion of her vegetarian Quorn cake for herself, letting Preston have her beef. And the gormless git did not even have the decency to score her a 10, either.

We’re very worried about the Shamon merchant, Keith Preddie. As well as being a Michael Jackson impersonator, he appears to also do a very bad impersonation of someone who knows anything about food and drink. Tonight, he admitted to having never before having eaten crab, and he thought that a souffle was some sort of drink. #thatissocroydon

With 31 points out of 40, D’Souza looks well on the way to victory.

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