I have been working with Centrepoint for a number of years supplying the Production for their flagship fundraiser Sleep Out.

Allen Leech (aka Tom Branson, the chauffeur, who moved ‘upstairs’) and Rob James-Collier (aka Thomas Barrow, the underbutler) are the ‘go to’ men when it comes to off shoot events and fundraising to do with Downton Abbey.

The core of the idea was to sell tables for a fundraising dinner to benefit Centrepoint and to support its Centrepoint Young People programme. With Downton on board, the venue had to be the Lancaster Room at The Savoy, and straight away I started looking at a 1920’s theme for the event.

Inevitably a Black Tie event, very soon the tables started selling out, and we knew the idea was going to work a treat. Included in the line up, we had Jim Carter (aka Mr Carson, the head butler) acting as MC/Auctioneer for the evening. We had Hugh Bonneville and Phyllis Logan, along with most of the rest of the cast from both upstairs and downstairs from Downton Abbey.

I engaged the services of Tom Walsh at Hawthorn Theatrical Ltd to provide an authentic lighting solution for the theme, as I knew having had discussions with him that they had a stock of old fashioned original lighting, plus some classic giant TV Fresnels on stands, and a good run of brass shell style theatre footlights to support the theme, so we had a good combination of set pieces, which doubled as lighting fixtures.

Audio wise, I went straight to Robin Conway at Capital Sound, and we came up with a plan to use the MLA Mini with the Yamaha QL1 control. I had a plan to build hides for the PA to stack it behind a dressed acoustic scrim, but in the end, as the scrims themselves would then become a big visual ‘block’ and the MLA Mini is so discrete, we left them on show.

The finale was the auction of the Downton cast themselves when 7 of the actors were auctioned off to the guests to join them at their tables for dessert and coffee. 

It was a special evening of entertainment and a very lucrative fundraiser raising over £130k for a worthy cause indeed.