Leo Woodall as Dexter and Ambika Mod as Emma; the cafe in Highbury

ONE Day fans headed to a Highbury cafe featured in the bittersweet drama this week to celebrate St Swithin’s Day – but rain kept more away.

The hit TV show adapted from David Nicholls’ best-selling novel centres on two graduates who meet on their last day at university and then again on the same day every year – July 15.

The romance became one of Netflix’s most popular shows when it was released in February.

Towards the end of the series, the once carefree and hard-partying Dexter Mayhew, played by Leo Woodall, has opened up a coffee shop, or what he calls a “boulangerie”.

These scenes were shot at La Maison in Calabria Road, which has seen a rise in customers ever since.

Memet Akpolat, who runs the cafe with his nephew Memet Gevekli, said: “The first couple of months were very busy, there was always a queue outside the shop. Business has been busier since the TV show came out. We are normally busy but definitely the numbers have increased. We’re open seven days a week and our hours are now until 5.30 – we do a good job.”

The show has been celebrated for the chemistry between the two might-be lovers, with Ambika Mod playing Emma Morley.

La Maison in Highbury was used for scenes in One Day, the makers of which sent coffee cup merch

According to folklore it is said that whatever the weather is like on St Swithin’s Day, it will continue for 40 days and 40 nights.

On Monday it was a little drizzly, so not perfect for an al fresco latte, and possibly the reason why online plans devised by fan groups to go to the cafe on July 15 didn’t quite turn out as a mass gathering.

Mr Akpolat said: “We actually weren’t that busy today, not as busy as we thought we were going to be because the weather was overcast and rainy. But we had around 150 fans throughout the day.”

He added: “When we opened we were busy for around two to three hours, but when it started raining fans wanted to come inside and we ran out of space. They wanted to take photos in the cafe.”

Mr Akpolat said he had at first been unaware that July 15 had such significance to One Day fans.

“I didn’t know what St Swithin’s Day was until last week when I Googled it,” he said.

“Then Netflix sent us a whole load of merchandise for free which we were told we could give to fans on July 15. There were bags and coffee cup sleeves – the bags went very fast.”

Mr Akpolat said Johnny Weldon, the actor in One Day who plays Ian, one of Emma’s ex-boyfriends in the drama, once visited the cafe for a coffee after being on a run in the area.

So too has author Mr Nicholls.

“He was walking past the cafe once, as he lives locally and he saw fans with their One Day books on the table and he came in and said ‘I wrote that book’ before he signed their copies,” Mr Akpolat said.

“He’s popped in multiple times since then.”

No latte-drinking Gooners?

AN estate agent in an episode of One Day suggests that the property in Highbury that Dexter is considering for a new business would be good on matchdays for the “football crowd”.

But before anybody can dip into the usual clichés about Arsenal fans being latte-sipping north Londoners, the agent changes his mind when the male lead outlines his plans for a “Parisian deli” or a boulangerie.

Emma argues the place has changed and is now full of families, and that there is nothing else like it in the area.