A SECOND Oxfordshire restaurant is to take centre stage in a new reality television show featuring Michelin-starred chef Raymond Blanc.

Porters, in Little Clarendon Street, Oxford, will be one of nine restaurants which will be taken over by a couple hoping to earn a living from the trade.

Veritas, a restaurant in Banbury, is already lined up to take part in the show, called The Restaurant, due to be screened on BBC2 later this year. Jonathan Flint, who owns Porters with girlfriend Sara Reevell, approached the BBC after hearing they were looking for restaurants to take part.

He said: "I emailed them saying we have a lovely restaurant in Oxford. They've got nine couples who will be coming into our restaurants and they will be filmed, they will be cooking and they will be judged on their performance."

Each restaurant will be under the control of the chosen couple for three nights and Sunday lunchtime each week - until all but one couple are booted off the show by Mr Blanc, who runs Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons, in Great Milton.

Mr Flint said: "We have no idea what what they will do, it could be anything from pizzas to curries and we won't know until they decide who to put in. It's very strange. I have just left there now and some of the BBC crew are doing things and I didn't want to go.

"It's kind of like leaving your baby. What we might do is go and have a meal there when the couple are doing it and see what they do - it will be very interesting."

Every week, each restaurant will be visited by Mr Blanc's inspectors and based on their reports and his own observations, he selects the three poorest-performing restaurants and sets them a challenge.

Then one of the three on trial will be eliminated each week. After seven weeks one couple and one restaurant will be left open and the winning couple get to go into the restaurant business with Mr Blanc and run their own place.

Mr Flint and Miss Reevell have run Porters for two years. Prior to that they ran Freud's, in Walton Street, and worked in a number of other restaurants.