A FORMER Diana Dors lookalike is hoping to cook up a storm when she appears on a special Wiltshire episode of Come Dine With Me next Wednesday.

Sharon Woodhouse, 39, from Stratton, became a local celebrity in the 1990s with her impersonation of Swindon’s fifties starlet.

Now she hopes to use her appearance on the popular Channel 4 programme to launch a glamorous ‘blonde bombshell’ cooking show of her own.

Sharon said: “I really enjoy cooking so I thought why not go for it.

“I applied for the show and got chosen for a special Wiltshire edition with three other people, we’ve all got a story to tell.

“For my audition I had to dress up as Diana Dors, talk about my inspiration for cooking and tell them all about the ‘blonde bombshell’ lifestyle.”

Come Dine With Me, now in its thirteenth year, sees four amateur chefs competing against each other to hold the best themed dinner party over the course of a week, the winner walks away with a cheque for £1,000.

Sharon remained tight lipped about the outcome of the show, but she promised viewers plenty of entertainment and sparks with the other contestants.

She took on Swindon fashion entrepreneur Sani Omar, a PVC-wearing pensioner who starred in OAPs Behaving Badly called Jane Buckle and Stephen Campbell, a photographer friend of Mick Jagger and the late David Bowie.

Describing her fellow contestants, Sharon said: “We didn’t always get on, we had some interesting debates between us.

“I clashed with Jane quite a lot, on the night that she hosted her dinner party she gave a pretty extrovert performance – it was shocking.

“At the beginning she said I was a bit of a ‘Jessica Rabbit’ but we were friends by the end.”

Sharon hosted her dinner party on the crucial final night of the competition, unsurprisingly she went for a 1950s glamour theme.

On the menu were ‘glamorous prawn and chorizo starter cups’ followed by ‘Some Like It Hot chicken curry’ with a glitter-decorated lemon and lime ‘pin up pie’ for dessert.

Sharon started cooking at 8am on the big day, going on until the early hours of the next morning and as if competing for a £1,000 prize wasn’t daunting enough, she had a cameraman watching her every move in the kitchen.

She added: “They were very long days, one after the other, it was really intense and the pressure was definitely on.”

Sharon won’t know what her fellow contestants thought of her until the programme airs next Wednesday when their interviews will be revealed.

She says although most of her friends and family have been supportive, with a week of footage edited down to an hour, some of them think going on the show is a bit of a risk.

Sharon’s colleagues at Nationwide will get the chance to see her on TV too, her bosses are planning to broadcast the show on the screens around the office.

You can catch the show next Wednesday, February 24, at 5pm on Channel 4.