At 8pm tonight millions of viewers will finally find out whether Colchester couple Michele English and Russell Clement have realised their dream of opening a restaurant with top chef Raymond Blanc.

While filming of the BBC series The Restaurant took place back in August, Michele and Russell are as much in the dark over who has won as the outsiders who will be tuning in.

Michele said: “Obviously we knew we were in the final, but we’ve been keeping that from people because we didn’t want to spoil it, but we still don’t know whether we’ve won.”

Michele, 34, and Russell, 30, explained that after the final task, cooking a lunch on the Orient Express, the television crew filmed two endings; one where they are told they had won, and the other that they had lost.

Russell said: “It was terrible, because they filmed the losing bit first before telling us what they were doing.”

Michele added: “We’ve not been able to do anything for three months.

“The BBC has been paying us a retainer and told us we couldn’t get other jobs just in case, but we’ve both been going mad waiting to find out.”

Even if they do lose, the couple can be rightly proud of their achievements and can take away with them an experience of a lifetime.

“The service on the Orient Express was just incredible,” said Russell.

“And just spending time with Raymond was a chef's dream come true. I will always have that.”

Michele said: “It will be horrible if we lose because we’ve worked so hard for it. Also, there’s the question of what will we do.

“We’ll have to start looking for a job.”

Even if that does happen, I’m sure people will be queueing up to employ them.

The final of The Restaurant is on BBC 2 at 8pm tonight.