Horncastle's balloon artist described winning grand total of £5 on Bargain Hunt

​Craig Cash of Twist & Make Balloons could be seen on BBC1’s Bargain Hunt on Friday (March 8) with fellow balloon artist and long-time friend Tony Twist on the blue team with expert Catherine Southon.

Craig is no stranger to appearing on TV, having being featured on several other quiz shows in the past, and said he had applied for Bargain Hunt several times in the past.

"I first applied to go on with my dad and we got as far as the auditions but no further,” he said, “This time we finally got through but then I applied for another show [Ross Kemp’s Bridge of Lies] and they put in a word for us so we got on!”

Filming in Newark Antiques Fair, Craig and Tony were in the blue team up against two students Jodie and Layla on the red team – who coincidentally recognised him from his day job of installing home alarm systems – and saw the teams each buy three items with a £300 budget to take to auction, with the hope of making the biggest profit.

Donning his trademark hat and glasses, in blue to match his team colour, Craig along with Tony were given the challenge of finding an item with numbers of numerals and something for under £75, and soon spotted an antique conductor’s baton, dated 1894 presented to Reverend Joyce, an antique telephone, and signs from antique arcade machines.

The duo didn’t find the first of their items until 40 minutes of their allotted hour had passed. But under some guidance from Catherine, they instead opted for a £95 George V travel clock as their numbers challenge and big spend, a pair of cast-iron kitchen scales for £55 and a vintage dancing clown music box for £40.

At auction, the music box sold for £15, and the travel clock sold for £90, and the scales sold for £20, but Catherine’s bonus buy saved the day with parrot-shaped nutcrackers as a nod to the team’s “crackers” personalities, which she bought for £80 and sold for a whopping £150.

Craig and Tony came away as winners of the episode – with a grand total of £5 in winnings, or £2.50 each, and of course, made balloon replicas of Catherine and presenter Natasha Raskin Sharp.

Rather that struggle to find something to spend him winnings on, Craig elected to frame his prize money as a memento of the experience.

“It was a great experience and was good fun,” he added, “Our items were a bit silly and the weighing scales we paid too much for, but we thought why not?”

Unfortunately, Craig was the victim of some hurtful comments on X (Twitter) making fun of his weight and dress sense, but he said he is speaking out on his experience of the trolling to shine a light on the “dark side” of the web:“I do find [trolling] funny as I have a thick skin and I find humour in it to take away the impact and control of what they say. “Someone said i looked like Tim Mallet and George Galloway’s love child, but I made a meme of it posted that in response as it’s a way to end the joke and turn it back on him.”

"I don’t let it bother me and it’s just a small minority on there who were saying some not-very-nice things, but there’s people out there who will be really upset by it.”