​Keith Brymer Jones, Rich Miller and Liza Tarbuck on the new celebrity edition of The Great Pottery Throw Down

We’ve seen Celebrity Bake Off, Celebrity Traitors and Celebrity MasterChef – the list goes on. The latest series to receive the star treatment is The Great Pottery Throw Down.

Hosted by actor, presenter and author Liza Tarbuck, the five-part series filmed at Gladstone Pottery in Staffordshire, sees six famous faces enter the pottery studio to learn the craft from judges Keith Brymer Jones and Rich Miller.

The celebrities getting their hands dirty and unleashing their creativity are comedian, Hull-born writer and actor Lucy Beaumont; comedian, writer, actor and author Fatiha El-Ghorri; comedian and podcaster Richard Herring; football legend and pundit Paul Merson; star of stage and screen Layton Williams; and actress, singer, dancer and presenter Denise van Outen.

Unlike the regular Great Pottery Throw Down format, there will be no weekly eliminations, giving the celebrities the full series to develop their skills before the competition reaches its finale.

Weekly challenges include making a breakfast set, a Raku animal and a garden gnome. A potter of the week will be named in each episode, before the contestants go head-to-head in the grand final.

“I think with celebrities, they’re not necessarily into pottery before they come on the show,” says Brymer Jones, 61, who will appear at Sheffield’s Off the Shelf festival on October 25, talking about his book Firing Earth: An Unexpected History of Pots and Potters.

“They might think it’s just another TV gig. But the moment they start touching the clay, they realise they’ve got to up their game in terms of their cognitive dexterity, their hands and everything. Then, after week two, they really, really get into it.

“It’s quite incredible and, as you’ll see throughout the series, there are some really lovely personal stories that come through the virtues of clay, which is wonderful.”

“We kind of didn’t know which way it would go because you’ve got a big group of six celebrities,” says Miller, 44.

“Will they really get behind the material and the clay? Will they take it seriously, or will it just be another kind of celebrity show? But I think it was so heartening, as a potter, to see that they really immersed themselves fully in the material and gave us such lovely, lovely stories. They are really committed to it fully.”

Miller says that, unlike more competitive series such as MasterChef and Bake Off, they wanted to create a safe environment for the celebrities to learn and make mistakes.

“Clay and ceramics are so unique because we kind of celebrate the mistakes. We always find that’s where the most learning occurs.

“So actually, rather than saying, ‘Oh, you know, this is not right’, in a very disparaging way, it’s more about looking at what’s been made and learning from it. I was just surprised by how quickly all of our celebrities in the series progressed and learned, because they didn’t shy away from making those mistakes.”

Brymer Jones, who debuted as a judge on The Great Pottery Throw Down in 2015, says he was amazed by how invested the celebrities became in the process. “What was fascinating was that, when they started the first challenge, which was the breakfast set, it was all a bit slapdash. They were all a bit clumsy with the clay, and it was so interesting.

“By week three or four, they were so much more respectful of the material. And they were far more so, especially with Layton. Layton’s attention to detail, and the finish of what he had in his head, was just amazing. I found it fascinating.”

Tarbuck, who presented The Big Breakfast in the late Nineties, says she thoroughly enjoyed the experience of presenting the show.

“I potentially had too much fun, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a crew work like that since The Big Breakfast. And I really mean that, because it means a lot to me,” says the 61-year-old presenter.

“Things don’t get made because of one person, and I think the arrogance of that makes me say no to a great deal of work. But when you’re in something that works that well together… we’re all part of it. It’s not down to one person.

“It was like a dance. I was really glad that I was outside of that, looking in, until I was just dragged in like the rest of them. I know I’m being a bit too much about it, but it was special.”

Miller says the series brought out a lot of personal stories from the celebrities.

“There are many different things working in parallel. I think lots of people consider themselves poor at art or making, and it’s just this line that’s been fed to them, you know, through the school system,” he explains.

“But actually, for everybody to have the opportunity to learn skills alongside exploring personal stories, I mean, it’s such unique material in that sense. You can kind of focus on whichever route you want, whether you’re really keen to learn techniques or whether you just want to do something a bit more creative.

“It just seems to allow people the freedom to open up and express themselves in a really personal way, which is lovely. And I didn’t know whether that would extend to the celebrity series as well, whether they’d sort of stay contained within the characters that we know. But they didn’t.”

Brymer Jones adds: “There can be an elitist thing about craft or art in itself, but we can all be creative in our own way. More power to people to do that, really.”

The Great Celebrity Pottery Throw Down airs on Channel 4 on Sunday, September 13.