A Tipping Point contestant has shared the two shocks she got on the set and how long it took for the winner of her episode to receive their prize.

The ITV show, hosted by Ben Shephard, 50, sees contestants answer questions and build up a cash prize throughout the game.

Emma Bradley, 48, appeared on the programme in 2021 and though she didn’t win, ‘really enjoyed’ her experience and has revealed all to MailOnline.

The blogger and content creator from Gloucester applied after watching the show ‘for ages’ and after auditioning, was offered a place as a ‘standby contestant’.

However, she was soon ‘bumped onto the proper schedule’ before the country went into lockdown for the pandemic and was called up for an episode with a week’s notice in March 2020.

After she arrived on set at around 7am, Emma was taken to a green room and prepared for filming, but she experienced a couple of surprising things during her time on the show.

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Emma Bradley, pictured, appeared on the programme in 2021 and though she didn’t win, ‘really enjoyed’ her experience and has revealed all to MailOnline

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After she arrived on set at around 7am, Emma was taken to a green room and prepared for filming but she experienced a couple of surprising things during her time on the show. Pictured: Emma with fellow contestants and host Ben Shephard

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The ITV show, hosted by Ben Shephard, pictured, sees contestants answer questions and build up a cash prize throughout the game

Though the contestants were briefed on how to introduce themselves on the show and given the chance to practice, that was as far as the preparations went.

‘We were told how to introduce ourselves before we went in and I was the fourth player, so the one standing closest to Ben when you look at it on the TV, and they tell you how to introduce yourself,’ Emma explained.

She added: ‘So everybody says their name, and then I had to say the final line, which was something like, ‘and I’m Emma from Gloucester, pleased to meet you’, or something like, I can’t remember the exact phrase, but they practised that with you a few times, but that’s the only thing that you practice.’

After being taken through to the set and put into position, they began filming, ‘what surprises me is you get no practice or anything,’ Emma said.

She added: ‘And again, I don’t know what I expected, but I thought, Oh, I get to practice pressing the button and seeing how it all works and seeing the machine or but, you know, maybe have a practice question each just to get us all warmed up.

‘And I thought maybe they stop and give you a little bit of coaching, but they don’t, from the minute you walk out, the game just plays exactly like it is on the TV…’

Another point that the contestant noted was that there were no breaks during filming, and it was recorded in one take with no stops or re-takes.

‘There’s no breaks and there’s no like, we’ll re-film that bit, there’s nothing, the editing all happens from them on their side,’ she revealed.

‘Obviously, they’ve got different camera angles going on. But everything that is said is said live as we’re being filmed.’

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Though the contestants were debriefed on how to introduce themselves on the show and given the chance to practice, that was as far as the preparations went

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Another point that the contestant noted was there were no breaks during filming, and it was recorded in one take with no stops or re-takes

Emma added: ‘And there’s no, ‘Oh, can we do that bit again?’ Which really surprised me, because I thought it would be stopping and starting, the actual filming takes the exact time the TV program does, because there is nothing.’

She explained, ‘because it is a competition, and it has to be seen as fair, and they have adjudicators watching to make sure it is all done and nobody gets any advantages, or, no, let’s do that again if you get a wrong answer, you know nothing, but you just don’t really think of it beforehand.’

Emma revealed that the players were told to speak their ‘way through playing the game so that it’s not silent,’ which also surprised her.

‘So you’ve got to be quite ahead, because you’re thinking about the questions and answering and playing the game. But also you’ve got to maintain that chit chat, and make sure you don’t swear or say anything inappropriate as well,’ she said.

‘You are having to think of those things as you’re playing the game, which did surprise me.’

After the episode was recorded, the contestants had to keep quiet about it until the instalment aired, which in Emma’s case was ‘about a year’.

‘I did tell, like my kids, they knew I’d gone and I told them I hadn’t won. So they knew, you know, we weren’t going to win anything,’ she said.

‘But I didn’t tell anybody else, really, which was fine because we were in COVID lockdowns, I wasn’t really seeing anybody anyway.’

The lucky winner of the show didn’t receive the money until the episode went live either.

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Emma revealed that the players were told to speak their ‘way through playing the game so that it’s not silent’ which also surprised her

Emma added: ‘The winner doesn’t get their money until after that’s aired as well, if they do tell people that’s the threat that they can hold over them, that they won’t give them the winnings, so people have to keep it quiet, especially if they’ve won.’

Contestants were allowed to tell people just before the episode aired, ‘to hype people up and tell people to watch because you’re on it,’ she explained.

Ben has hosted the show since 2012 and Emma described him as ‘really friendly and really encouraging,’ though she felt interactions were limited because of the looming pandemic.

He took a group photo with the contestants and Emma explained: ‘You don’t see a lot of him. He just comes to introduce himself before you film, and then he comes and just says at the end, ‘hope you had a nice time and enjoyed it”.

She added: ‘It’s such a swift production, you don’t spend a lot of time with him. Certainly, we didn’t in that scenario, whether that’s a little bit different outside of COVID times? I’m not sure.’

Emma also described the set as ‘really small’ and said how it ‘looks massive on TV, but they’re actually quite small sets’.

She had to bring along a few outfit options for the day and the production crew chose what the contestants would wear.

‘They tell you to bring three or four different outfits with you, and then their crew decide what you’re going to wear out of your clothes,’ Emma explained.

‘I guess so that the colours work across the four contestants.’

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Ben has hosted the show since 2012 and Emma described him as ‘really friendly and really encouraging’ though she felt interactions were limited because of the looming pandemic

In the end, Emma didn’t win and was the second contestant to go out.

She said: ‘I was just unlucky… when I look back as well, it’s really funny, because you can see I’m banging the button, and I was either getting pipped, not quickest at getting through setting the button off, or just the coins just didn’t fall for me at all.’

As for her tips for those interested in applying for Tipping Point, Emma says to ‘be yourself more than anything’.

She added: ‘You really do need to be your natural, authentic self when you do these things, like, if you’re really introverted, it probably isn’t for you .’

Emma also recommended practising ‘what sort of questions come up, whether it’s at your level’.