MORE GRIT THAN GLITZ

Presenters Tess Daly, Claudia Winkleman and Sir Bruce Forsyth, may have looked groomed to perfection on screen but it seems they were hardly preparing in luxury – in the early years at least. “Oh, on the first series, Tess’s room was under the stage next to the orchestra” props master Bobby Warans remembers. “It must have been 10 foot square. It was ugly, it was all full of scaffold bars, and the designer said, ‘Do what you can with that’. Oh, we did things on pleated fabric on frames, we had to hire these ghastly ballroom frocks.”