The contest is over - but the cameras continue to roll. Jane and Jeremy Hooper, winners of BBC 2's The Restaurant competition are now undergoing one of the toughest challenges yet - a ten-day intensive training under the watchful eye of celebrity chef Raymond Blanc and the cameras in preparation for their future as restaurateurs.

Royal Marine Corps cook Jeremy and his wife, a trainee teacher from Barnstaple, North Devon, beat eight other couples to win an opportunity to run their own business in partnership with Raymond Blanc.

Together, they convinced Raymond and his panel of inspectors that they have the passion, determination and skills needed to run a successful business, despite their lack of commercial experience. Over eight weeks, the couple faced a series of demanding challenges, designed by Raymond to put their culinary skills to the test at Eight in the Country, in Frieth, Buckinghamshire.

Work is now under way to refurbish Eight at the Thatch, Thame, in time for a handing over of keys ceremony on November 14, where they will face their final challenge - running their own restaurant for real and making it pay.

This week the couple have been working at the Brasserie Blanc, in Walton Street, Oxford. Jeremy has been consigned to the kitchen, while Jane has been instructed on the final details of front of house duties, bookkeeping and general management. The pace now is as tough as anything they underwent during the filming sessions for The Restaurant.

Jane said that their most difficult challenge happened during the first week when they were set the task of staging a local night, where only local food was to be served.

"People must have thought it silly that we couldn't find any local food, but remember Jeremy had only just returned from Afghanistan, where seasonal food is non-existent. We were also in an area that we did not know. It was all very fraught. However, we got over that.

"Also, we didn't get to meet Raymond until that moment when the keys were placed on the table at Le Manoir and we learned which restaurants we would be taking over during the competition. It was so daunting."

Once that first episode was over, however, and the couple came to appreciate Raymond's positive approach to both teaching restaurant skills and to the customer, they began to relax.

Jane said: "He was so very kind, so positive. He never knocked us down, and he accepted the fact that Jeremy had only just returned from Afghanistan, that we were undergoing that adjustment period couples go through when they have been separated for some time. Yes, that was why there were so many tears. But as the days, then weeks passed, we got stronger and stronger. Raymond understood that the tears were inevitable."

Raymond says that he finally chose this couple because they have a genuine desire, a commitment to succeed.

"Remember Jeremy gave up his job in the Marines to do this - that was a huge gamble. I knew that the couple I chose had to be strong, capable of being mine host and, more importantly, capable of creating a great restaurant."

He went on to explain that this couple complemented each other. "It takes more than 20 years to train a chef - this couple are being fast-tracked through. This is possible because Jeremy is highly skilled and trained not to panic. He's totally disciplined and meticulous about cleanliness, which of course he had to be when cooking in a tent kitchen in the middle of a desert.

"Besides which, he has a firm desire to make it happen - that's important," said Raymond, who admires Jeremy's ability to act like a ship's captain when things go wrong. "He was as cool as a cucumber. Yes, Jane cried, but I can cope with that. I have worked with a lot of young ladies, and women deal with stress differently from men. They find a private place to have a good cry, while men hit the wall, scream and swear. Jane is a perfectionist and that's what counts."

Jeremy admits that there's a great difference between cooking in a camp kitchen, for anything up to 2,000 troops and a busy restaurant. "It's canteen food, of course, cooking in bulk rather than turning out small, top-quality prestige food to customers paying a lot more money. But I learned a great deal while in Afghanistan. Remember that the troops need all the energy they can get. We were concentrating on giving them the right balance of calories and carbohydrates. Often there were 260 men cooking on gas hobs and stoves that used to warp when it got too hot.

"And it could get hot. When you think of the heat from all those ovens, and a temperature of 40C beating down outside, you can appreciate that we had to keep drinking water and more water to keep on top of a heat like that."

He laughs at that now, having experienced a 60C temperature while cooking in a restaurant kitchen where chefs don't have time to grab a bottle of water.

During his period at Brassiere Blanc this week, Jeremy will be in charge of producing several meat dishes, including poached chicken leg, slow-cooked shoulder of lamb, pan-fried calves' liver and duck breast.

These are the kind of dishes that he will be cooking at their new restaurant, Eight at the Thatch. Raymond describes their future menu as one which will offer simple, wholesome food which is very affordable. They will be serving small typical pub-food offerings too. And for the locals there will be at least five different beers on tap.