Mother's anxiety over family's 'Truman Show' experiment

A mother of two today admitted that she was a little anxious about putting her family in their very own version of The Truman Show.

John and Claire Want, both 30, were plucked from thousands of other hopefuls who wanted to take part in the 100-day “social experiment”.

Chosen for being Britain’s “most typical family”, the lives of the Wants and their two children Niclas, four, and Ieuan, two, will be broadcast via webcam on the Internet.

Mr Want, a marketing manager, said he was “very proud” of the family and wanted to show them off.

The couple, from Caerphilly, south Wales, already have their own website, www.thewants.co.uk.

Mr Want said: “I read about the experiment in one of the marketing trade magazines and decided to apply.

“I didn’t think any more about it until I got a call saying that our family had made it on to the shortlist.

“But I hadn’t told my wife before then. She found the idea a little bit daunting at first but now she thinks it’s really good fun.

“We decide which photos we take and what to download every night, and that’s what appealed to me. We’ll have control over what goes out.

“Normal families around the country will be interested to see what another normal family does.”

Mrs Want, a housewife, who also helps run the family’s bouncy castle business, said: “I’m still a little bit hesitant and worrying about whether there’s anything in our past that might come out, but we can’t think of anything.”

The couple, who married a year after meeting in Brighton in 1996, promise to take photos of everything from doing the week’s shopping and going to work to Niclas at school.

Technology firm Epson, which came up with the idea, believes the Wants could become an international phenomenon as a result of the fly-on-the-wall experiment.

Epson spokeswoman Jane Barnard said: “The Wants stood out due to their typically British sense of humour, their love of caravanning and John Want’s obsession with meat pies.”

The family will be paid £11,250 (€16,600) to take part in the project – the UK’s typical wage for that amount of time.

Photographs taken of them by Lord Lichfield and other celebrity photographers will be exhibited in a London gallery in June.

The show will start broadcasting on March 15.