Bargain Hunt contestants claim producers changed prices on BBC show

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Bargain Hunt producers have been forced to step in to prevent cheating on the show, according to a father and daughter team who appeared on it.

Simon and Rosie Ellis, who competed on the popular BBC daytime show last year, claim that previous teams have ruined the spirit of the game by getting family or friends to bid at auction in order to drum up profit, forcing producers to step in.

“It’s so obvious in the episodes when someone has cheated, though,” Simon said.

“You can always tell when someone’s like, ‘Oh wow, that’s made a lot of money’, and it’s not like they lose anything because you keep the profit.”

Express.co.uk contacted representatives for Bargain Hunt who declined to comment.

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The pair revealed many behind-the-scenes secrets from the show in an interview with Daily Mail.

The long-running programme sees two teams given a set amount of money with which to purchase antiques.

They are paired with an antiques expert to try and find items that will earn them a profit when later sold at auction.

However, Simon and Rosie allege that all is not as it seems as the programme can only show sales in pounds.

Marketing assistant Rosie claims that she bargained an item down to £3.50 but was told she had to go up to £4, which ate into her profit.

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Her managing director father also claimed that certain items are off the table when it comes to purchases due to copyright issues.

“There are also certain things you can’t buy because of copyright reasons,” he said. “You couldn’t buy a picture of Marilyn Monroe, for instance, because if you showed it on the camera, that would be copyrighted, and they’d have to pay a fee.

That isn’t the only element of the show that isn’t what it seems as Rosie also claims that teams have more than the allocated hour to make the three purchases they will take to auction, claiming that they browsed the antique fair for at least three hours when they appeared.

She said that the production team kept stopping the timer so they could go back over scenes and reshoot parts which means that you are there far longer than they allow viewers to believe.

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