Loosen up and get bowled over

Nick Gant and Tanya Dean were your average craftspeople working in plastics until they hit on the idea of designing their own toilet seat.

Now the pair are lifting the lid on their work with an exhibition called Seats of Desire at London’s Coningsby Gallery from 5 to 16 February.

“We wanted a loo seat to match the rest of our bathroom and couldn’t find one,” explains Gant. “So we made an acrylic royal blue one with gold in it and our families liked it so much we made some more.”

Dean somehow manoeuvred herself on to TV show What’s My Line? and the pair have been flushed with success ever since.

“The celebs wanted seats, their celeb friends wanted seats, they went to the loo – as celebs do – and wanted even more seats after using ours,” says Gant, who is cagey about revealing names.

The seats come in all shapes and colours, including flower shapes with leaves as lids and see- through seats.

They cost between 190 and 300, though Gant and Dean’s company BoBo Designs plans lower-cost ranges of favourites.