When CNBC got in touch to ask if they could shoot a travel segment at a private hire stately home I was doing the PR for, I thought it would be pretty straightforward. The reporter, Susan Li, was doing some filming in London before heading up to us in Somerset and had set aside an afternoon to explore the house and sample some English sporting pursuits. We thought it would be nice for her to experience clay pigeon shooting and to try her hand at the house's crazy rooftop golf. Her producer asked me if I could find some country wear for her as she would be in city clothes, and that's where things started to get a bit odd...
I rang a stylish shooting friend of mine who was happy to lend me an outfit and, after a mad dash to her house and back, I had a suitably 'country' outfit lined up. Susan turned up in a tight white dress and high heels so we laughed and said perhaps we should make a joke about it on camera. The owner, Archie, has a great sense of humour and immediately agreed to ham it up for the camera, pretending that her outfit would "simply not do" and she would need to wear the family tweed instead.
The filming went well and afterwards I thought it was worth letting a local news agency know, as it was quite an event for a relatively unknown stately home to feature on a big US TV show. Of course I mentioned the joke about the dress and the country tweeds. The next thing I knew, there was an alert in my inbox letting me know that the house was on the Daily Mail website. The headline? "American TV presenter too sexy for an English Country Estate." Yikes!
Read the full article here.
Luckily, as I said, the owner Archie has a great sense of humour and took it all very well. We had, after all, got him in the Daily Mail - which has one of the largest online readerships in the world - and the publicity was bound to be good as a result. It was. Booking inquiries went up and there was interest from American tourists even before the TV show was aired. All of them interested in getting the full Downtown experience, insulting Englishmen and all!
www.northcadburycourt.com
You can see Susan's film here, on the CNBC website: