Former X Factor contestant Charlotte Lily from Preston to appear in new show Beauty and the Geek

Charlotte Lily, 24, will be a contestant on Beauty and the Geek, hosted by Mollie King and Matt Edmondson, which will first air on streaming service Discovery+ on Sunday, September 25.

The former Lostock Hall Academy and Preston College pupil first appeared on our screens back in 2018 when she auditioned for ITV’s The X Factor, making it to the six-chair challenge.

Charlotte had dropped out of her UCLan music degree to pursue her love of writing music, but following her X Factor appearance, she soon decided to switch career paths.

Charlotte, who is also a self-employed funeral florist, said: “After the X Factor, I was invited to write music out of recording studios in Thailand, so I spent a lot of 2019 just producing music, but I didn't release a lot of it because the more I did it, the more I realised what I wanted from the future. After being on The X Factor, I thought TV was an avenue which I wanted to explore more because I just fell in love with all the equipment, all the cameras on the side and all the different crew members.

"Then I've always been brought up around campervans and I didn't think it was cool hanging out with my dad, building them, until lockdown, when he started vlogging them so I thought this is quite cool actually, I'm going to vlog it and I was getting more views on my campervan videos than I was on my music videos. So then, a TV production company who made the campervan shows that I've been on got in touch asking if I'd be on their shows, building campervans with dad, and it just spiralled from there.”

Charlotte has now appeared on numerous shows including Million Pound Motorhomes, Builds on Wheels, Moneybags, and This Morning, but her latest venture is slightly different.

Beauty and the Geek is a reality show which pairs up female ‘beauties’ with male ‘geeks’ who must complete challenges throughout the eight-part series to be crowned winners and receive the £50,000 cash prize.

Charlotte said: “It’s very different to the other shows! I've been asked to be on dating shows before, but it's always been those one off episodes and they never appealed to me because I genuinely want to find someone I can spend the rest of my life with. Then I saw a post casting for ‘geeks’, so I tried to get my brother to sign up because he's very intelligent, and would fit the description with his hobbies and interest, but he wasn't interested. So I thought well, I'd quite like to date someone respectable, so why don't I try and get on the show and hopefully I can meet a geek because a geek is not going to be a gym person who’s at the gym 24/7, doesn't want to hang out with you, which is all I was attracting on Tinder, and I got an audition the next day and, not thinking I'd get any further, I was making it past all the rounds, and then next thing I knew, they said are you alright to move to London next week to film!”

The self-proclaimed ‘furbaby mum’ to two cats and two Border Collies says that her time filming in London was a culture shock, adjusting from life in the countryside of Preston to the “busy” city.

She went from getting up early for long dog walks with a bare face and muddy boots, followed by flower arranging and comfy nights in, to getting up early to put a full face of makeup on, heels and dresses, followed by adventures in secret locations and late night socialisation.

Summarising her experience, Charlotte said: “It's a genuine show, everything that you see, the reactions, the challenges, they’re all real because we don't get told what's happening or what to do. We're separated from the geeks until cameras are on so we don't even get to speak to them until the challenge so that way we genuinely get to know each other when the cameras are filming it. So I'm excited for people to see the real me, and there's a lot of ups and downs because the challenges make you step out of your comfort zone, so you wouldn't necessarily do them living in Preston – it tested me a lot more.

“It's just real people doing real daytime activities, growing their bond as a pair and developing themselves, learning about life and what they want from the future. For me, I didn't really know what I wanted from my geek, but what I learnt was self worth, rather than just going on a date with any guy who asks me out and is good looking, now I'm only gonna go on a date if I genuinely think there’s a connection, so it was sort of life changing.”

She added: “I never would have thought I'd end up on a dating show but I never thought I’d go on the campervan shows either. Other people from Preston, if you ever see these castings, and you think ‘I'd never get on them’, still apply because you honestly never know. I applied for Beauty and the Geek, I didn't get asked to go on it, so it just goes to show you never know unless you apply!”