Unnecessarily extravagant or that perfect finishing touch?

£60,500

Have you ever noticed how many cocktails sound downright dangerous? I’m not talking about the wisdom of combining five spirits in one glass (Long Island Iced Tea) or the risks of setting fire to something you’re about to swallow (Flaming Sambuca).
It’s more that, for a drink that’s supposed to suggest a certain style and sophistication, or which at least did before it was hijacked by students and hen parties, there’s an awful lot of violence on a cocktail list: check out the gore (Bloody Mary, Sangria – that’s ‘bleeding’ in Spanish); an actual assault (Punch); and several unpleasant ways to die (Snakebite, Mudslide, Kamikaze). And that’s before you even get to the shots.
Perhaps this was what inspired the people at Manchester’s Touched Interiors when they decided to make a cocktail cabinet in the shape of an unexploded missile. (Touched, incidentally, is where the set-dressers of Fifty Shades of Gray got many of their props.)
While it might not be a conventional design for a piece of furniture, placing the RAF Mk1 Cluster Bomb drinks cabinet in a corner of your living room will certainly make your party go with a bang. Finished in gleaming aluminium, it stands over two metres tall and opens to reveals three glass shelves on a gold-plated brass spindle. At the bottom of this is a platform of lacquered American walnut that slides open to give access to an ‘armoury’, as the designers put it, of copper cocktail utensils.
There’s no denying this piece has a certain Art Deco elegance, and if you can get your head round the idea of living with a weapon of mass destruction, it may be just the finishing touch your home needs. But if it turns out that all you end up mixing is an endless succession of Jägerbombs, you’ve only got yourself to blame.

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Words Judy Diamond