A rock n’ roll tea dance that’s been quietly taking London by storm, the Viva Cake girls are just the kind of ladies we love – those cake-making, tea-providing darlins! marmaLADYa.com meets founders Kate and Jazz

So how did Viva Cake come about?
We used to sit around our kitchen really bored of all the indie and club nights that were on. We wanted to go to an old-fashioned tea dance – we love baking and having tea. We looked about but there wasn’t anything. We wanted to go somewhere, go early, have a chat with our friends, not be full on where you start drinking straight away. And not just bands and DJs, something different. So we thought why not do it ourselves?

And then it was all collecting teacups and finding a venue?
Indeed! We’d never done anything like it before, but we started to collect china, and tablecloths and doilies. We did that for about a year. We built up quite a collection. We’re a bit precious about our teacups, we don’t like it when people try and buy our cups! After that we looked for a venue. We wanted an old fashioned social club. The kind of place where you’d have a tea dance. We needed somewhere where we could serve food to people, but we needed it to be open late too. The first night was in October 2005 at the Working Men’s Social Club in Bethnal Green. We flyered like mad! We were so scared. We had no idea if anyone would turn up. It was £5 then, now it’s £7, quite reasonable. We give away food! It was a really new thing at the time, we got in there just as a big change was happening. People were wanting more from going out. We felt it, among ourselves and our friends, we wanted something different.

What goes on at a Viva Cake tea dance?
We start at 4.30, really early! And it goes on to about one, every Saturday. In the early part we serve tea. We lay out all the food. It’s a bit like a wedding. You come in you sit down, you have some tea and help yourself to food. Once you pay your entry you don’t pay for anything apart from drinks from the bar. We have dominoes and cards on the tables. We have a tarot card reader, we have bingo, and a beauty bar where you can get your nails done, all night long.

We serve tea till about half past seven and then we pack up – when people start to drink from the bar we whip the table clothes off. We do all the washing up too! It’s a nightmare, it’s a lot of work. We also have two roller-skating tea-waitresses. The dance lessons start about 8pm. We have really good dance teachers, they’ve been with us from the start. Everyone’s really good at making sure people get a partner for dancing. We have bands and DJs too – all rockabilly and rock n’ roll. We have different bands, but there aren’t that many rockabilly bands out there, so we do have a few back. We’re also planning a regular Stitch n Bitch as part of the night. In the summer we did summer fêtes and we had a bake-off competition.

Are you baking queens?
Yes! We make all the food. We make as much as we can in the two days before the night, in our kitchens at home. We do cupcakes, sandwiches, biscuits, and scones. For Christmas we did mince pies with little hearts. We try to vary our repertoire. At the moment we’re trying to master French macaroons. They’re the hardest thing ever, it’s an obsession. There’s a whole technique, it’s an art, the holy grail of macaroon making.

Who comes to the Viva Cake tea dances?
We’ve got a loyal following, mostly regulars. To begin with it was a lot of east Londoners and students. But now we’ve been going over a year, the word has really spread and it’s a real mix. And it’s a good mix of boys and girls – girls bring their boyfriends. We get people in their 30s and sometime in their 50s and 60s. Some people just come for the tea and go. We get a lot of birthday parties. If it’s your birthday and we know about it we’ll make a special cake. Most of our promotion is through MySpace. We’re not big on publicity. We don’t put ourselves in someone’s listing unless they get in touch with us. It’s nice we’ve had a lot of interest from the press. Time Out have been very supportive of us.

What about copycat nights?
Our identity is quite strong, even though other nights have cropped up doing something similar, we were the first and people know that. We’ve got a collective going with friends working with us. We’ve got so many creative friends and we really want to do something where everyone can be involved. It’s a nice way to be and it’s a great way to hang out with your friends.

And plans for the future?
We’ll continue with the monthly tea dances, but we want to take Viva Cake nationwide. We’re looking at doing one in Glasgow and in north England. That’s the next step for Viva Cake. We’re also going to have a Viva Cake teahouse at Lost Vagueness in Glastonbury this summer, and we’ll do some of the other festivals as well. We do catering as well. We aiming for it to be a full-time business and we want to include as many of our friends as possible.

Viva Cake takes place monthly at the St Aloysius Social Club, 20 Phoenix Road London, London NW1, 4.30pm-12am, £7. The next tea dance is Saturday 20 January. See www.myspace.com/vivacakebitches for more info.