'Their standard was average' - How celebrities got on in The Great British Sewing Bee Christmas special

“I’d really missed everyone. I had awful FOMO [Fear Of Missing Out] not being there last year, so it was really nice to be back. We had big personalities for the Christmas special,” says Pascoe.

“We had H [Ian ‘H’ Watkins] from Steps singing and dancing. We had Kellie Bright of EastEnders fame, who’s also very stage school-y and very keen. We had Fatiha El-Ghorri, who’s a really brilliant comedian and a friend of mine. I really enjoyed having her on the show because she was very cheeky to the judges in a way our regular sewers absolutely aren’t.

“Yes. I get relief… relief that I don’t have to make anything, that I just have to go around and ask how they’re doing. That’s what I get. They all did pretty well. They’d definitely practised. Some had sewn things before or had nanas or mums who sewed a bit. There was no one terrible and a couple were really good.”

Pascoe, the best-selling author of Weirdo, Animal, and Sex Power Money, is the presenter of Guessable?, Comedians Giving Lectures, and Last Woman on Earth, and co-hosts the podcast Sara & Cariad’s Weirdos Book Club with Cariad Lloyd.

She is also joined by Patrick Grant, 52, a judge, designer, entrepreneur and founder/creative director of Community Clothing – a sustainable fashion brand he set up in 2016 to champion affordable and quality UK-made clothes – and Esme Young, 75, who has been a judge since 2016. She is a designer who’s made costumes for films such as Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Trainspotting and Bridget Jones’s Diary, and is also a tutor at Central Saint Martins art school.

In this year’s Christmas celebrity special, Grant and Young put the sewing skills of four celebrities to the test.

It included English actress Kellie Bright, 48, who stars as Linda Carter in the BBC soap opera EastEnders, for which she won the 2015 British Soap Award for Best Actress and Best Dramatic Performance, Welsh singer and actor Ian ‘H’ Watkins, 48, who is best known as one-fifth of Steps, British comedian and writer Fatiha El-Ghorri, 43, who recently starred in the Sky Max comedy Mr. Bigstuff with Danny Dyer, and English television personality Charlotte Crosby, 34, who is known for appearing in the MTV reality series Geordie Shore and winning the 12th series of Celebrity Big Brother.

They put their twist on a pattern for an advent calendar, and turned onesies into a fun Christmas costume for a child in the transformation challenge –where the sewers are tasked with upcycling and overhauling old garments into something radically new. Finally, they created an outfit made to measure their models, inspired by their favourite Christmas number one.

“As always, the celebrities were really, really good fun. They all gave it a good go and made good stuff. Their standard was… average. A couple had done a bit of sewing. Charlotte had done some textiles at school and Kellie is quite an accomplished crafter. You could tell she was really loving the opportunity. Fatiha was hilarious,” says Grant.

“The advent calendars were genuinely really good. Really good. And then, the transformation challenge was turning a onesie into a child’s festive outfit. Fatiha did a princess costume and H did a reindeer and managed to make a very impressive set of antlers. That was probably the highlight. The made-to-measures were inspired by a Christmas No. 1. Charlotte Cosby did a sausage roll.”

“That was easing them in gently. It was all flat and just topstitching pockets on and things. It was simple, but it was fun. It’s also something people watching at home can have a go at with their kids. They managed quite well. Fatiha put a tagine on hers – I thought that was great because Christmas means different things to different people and, in all of these challenges, you’re expressing who you are. They all did that,” adds Young.

“For the transformation challenge, they had to turn a onesie into a child’s festive outfit. That is always a tricky one. And the made-to-measures were all inspired by their favourite Christmas No.1s.”

The Great British Sewing Bee, Celebrity Christmas Special aired on Thursday, December 19 but is still available to view on BBC iPlayer.