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Celebs Go Dating: Will Gogglebox's Amy Tapper and Love Island's Eyal Booker find love?

Gogglebox's Amy Tapper and Love Island's Eyal Booker are on a new reality show

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Amy Tapper has grown up sharing her life on television as a member of the Tapper family, who laugh, cry and fight in front of the TV on Channel 4’s hit series Gogglebox. 

After six years, 18-year-old Ms Tapper has decided to leave the show, taking a break so that she can go to Israel with FZY, but not before she goes on another reality TV show.

She is part of the line-up on ITV2's Celebs Go Dating, where matchmakers Eden Blackman and Nadia Essex help a set of celebrities find love.

And Ms Tapper, who is a member of Edgware Synagogue, is joined alongside another Jewish co-star, Eyal Booker, the ex-JFS pupil who found fame as the deep and spiritual Love Island evictee.

But can the professional matchmakers at the Celebrity Dating Agency help Ms Tapper, who has never been on a date, or Mr Booker, who despite his "spirituality" often fails to connect?

According to Ms Tapper, they can.

“In the (Jewish) community, you don’t really go on dates with each other. It is more, 'this one sees that one at a party'. I had never been asked out on a date before and I had very little confidence,” she tells the JC.

She said she wanted “people to get to know me as an individual and not part of a family.”

She is taking part in the series before she joins the rest of her peers in Israel for seven months.

“I always wanted to do it. Being Jewish is very important to me and I love FZY because they are very pluralistic you can be Reform, Orthodox, it doesn’t matter, they show you the different stands in Judaism and everyone is welcome. It is very me."

She said she has never been made to feel like she needs to hold back on her love for Israel or her Jewish identity, in the television world. 

“I always say you can take Amy out of the Jewish world but you can’t take the Jewish world out of Amy.”

And spending her teen years on television watched by thousands of viewers has not fazed the former Yavneh College pupil.

“The thing is we had a really nice balance of TV life and normal life, it didn’t get in the way at all and being on Gogglebox became a way to spend time as a family.”

Despite being recognised in public, she does not like to think of herself as a celebrity.

“I guess in the back of your mind you might wonder are people interested in you because I you are on the telly or is it because they are genuine.

“But going on dates has actually been a massive compliment just to know yes, people are interested in me.”

Her co-star Mr Booker also needed a confidence boost having been on Love Island.

“That show did knock my confidence a bit. I don’t think I had the easiest time,” he says.

He says it has been hard to get critical feedback on the new show from the dating coaches who have pulled him up on some of his less charming behaviour, which includes telling a brunette date that he liked blondes.

“I was just trying to tell the truth," he says.

"I think dating in front of a camera is a challenge and when you get rejected it is disheartening, but it is just good to take part in new experiences.”

Despite rumours of a romance between the two co-stars they are just friends, but they both said it was nice to have someone on the show who understands where they are coming from.

Ms Tapper adds: “Before the show I was getting my nails done and this little old lady in came up to me and said ‘are you going on Celebs Go Dating?

“She said ‘I’m Eyal’s grandma.’

"When we told the others on the show they all said ‘that is so weird,’ but in our world it is totally normal. We’re from the same place.”

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