Strictly Come Café Reality

On Saturday 10/10/2015, the BBC aired their fantastic show Strictly Come Dancing. The dances were based on movie sets and Café Reality had the honour of being part of the set for “Summer Lovin”, performed by Daniel O’Donnell and Kristina Rhianoff.

The furniture that we supplied for the set was the dining unit that Kristina was seated on before starting their Cha Cha routine. An LED strip was added to the edge of the table (nice touch by the way BBC!) and the lovely Kristina wore a beautiful yellow dress to represent Sandy for the all-time classic musical, Grease.

The BBC contacted my esteemed colleague Daniel on 06/10/2015, looking for a fast food dining unit, with no back on the seats. With the majority of these benches being made-to-order, on an estimated 4 week lead time, Dan knew that he was facing a challenge. Offering the great customer service that the company likes to provide, he accepted the challenge and found the perfect dining unit… Raising the standard for us even more! As a stroke of luck, our supplier had exactly what the BBC was looking for and Dan arranged for it all to be delivered well in time for the show’s live performance. House points for Daniel!

Having a dining bench on a set of a television show is pretty remarkable in itself. Seeing one of the stars sitting at it gave us all a sense of pride! What better way to see what we are selling than on television with a gorgeous dancing star making use of it!

One viewer even commented that the bench added a little something:

“I thought the dining bench was a great addition to the 1950s Grease set. Using a simple design with great lighting worked really well with the theme and completed the set, making it look more real”.

Although the scores for the dancing were (harshly) not that great, even seeing it for myself, I think that even Craig Revel Horwood would have rated the set a 10… But we would settle for an 8…!

Great fun being part of a television set, we all feel a sense of pride working here, but that is definitely fuelled moreso when seeing the product on the big screen! Definitely a huge well done to the set designers, the BBC, the dancers, and of course… Dan!