"Can I speak to Oli please...?"
It was a normal Wednesday at Neon Towers and the phone rang. It was the BBC no less, the TV people. And they were doing a feature on growth businesses in the UK on the BBC2 Daily Politics show.
As we had grown a bit, they thought it might be good to get our CEO Oli Christie up to the big smoke for an interview with a couple of other "entrepreneurs" (horrible word).
And before you knew it, Oli was standing in the shadow of Big Ben wandering down to their TV studio at Millbank next to the Houses of Parliament.
Well made up!
We're not sure if Oli was looking a bit peaky, but the first stop was the makeup room. Yes really! And a very nice lady powdered and pampered and did her best at making him look vaguely presentable and acceptable to the great British viewing public.
Here Oli is in makeup with all the brushes and powders by the Hollywood lightsmirror!
And as it was sunny they thought it would be a good idea to do the feature outside Parliament on that green where you always see presenters and MPs being quizzed. It was all rather exciting.
And then it got really proper as they had lights, one of those reflector circular things, a woman with one of those fluffy sound boom things (is she the Gaffer?) and a cameraman. Cables everywhere and a very nice presenter called Giles Dilnot. This was like real TV.
Here's Giles and Oli...
The other two businessmen ran a group of cake shops and a wooden flooring company. And we make mobile games, so we all had nothing in common really, apart from the fact we'd started our own companies and they were growing.
We all had chats before and ran through what we were going to talk about. The piece would be six minutes long and Giles told us it would fly by (it really did).
And...action!
Giles had the producer in his ear giving him updates on timings as the show was changing the schedule a bit for a live interview with the scottish deputy PM. And then we were live on air, totally live. No delay in case a rude word was said, which was a slight concern.
Oli waffled and wibbled a bit and it all flew by so quickly that he wasn't really sure what he said, but if you want to see six minutes of BAFFA-winning TV gold, then enjoy below...
Behind the scenes
Have a peep at where the magic really happens...
Rent a quote
Oli, glowing with makeup, commented after, "It was a great honour to be asked to represent Neon Play to talk briefly about the growth of our business. It was a fantastic experience and fascinating to see the inside workings of a live TV show."
