BT Tower re-opening to diners: How do I get a table at the pop-up restaurant?

The restaurant is re-opening to mark the Tower's golden anniversary

The BT Tower's once iconic restaurant is to re-open this summer (Carl Court/Getty Images)

The restaurant atop London’s BT Tower is to re-open to diners as part of the building’s 50th anniversary celebrations, which hark back to its golden age.

Once a glitzy destination for dinner and cocktails in the 1960s and 1970s, the revolving restaurant at the top of the Post Office Tower was closed to diners in 1980 when it was taken over by BT.

In its heyday, some 4,000 visitors a day rode the lift to the observation tower, and the Top of the Tower restaurant served 800 lunches and 1,300 dinners every day.

Nowadays, the Tower is a television network switching centre which is sometimes let out for charity events.

For two weeks from 25 July until 7 August, over 16s will be able to dine in the restaurant situated on the 34th floor and enjoy dramatic views of the capital hundreds of meters in the air.

To score a ticket, potential diners must enter a ballot, with a maximum of four guests per allocation.

Ballot one will be open from 9am on 22nd June until 29th June, and ballot two will open from 30 June until 7 July.

Lunches will set diners back £49.95 per person, while dinner will cost £67.95.

For those who miss out, BT will hold another ballot in September for free 30minute viewings from the 34th floor.

Standing at 180 metres high, the Tower was opened by Prime Minister Harold Wilson on 8 October 1965, with the public restaurant opened by Tony Benn, then Postmaster General, and Billy Butlin, owner of the eponymous family holiday parks, the following year.

Since its opening, the Tower has featured in several films and a series of Doctor Who.

Gavin Patterson, BT Group chief executive, said: “The BT Tower was a unique feat of engineering when it was first built and it remains an important and much loved building today.

"It has been a working icon of technological innovation for 50 years and what better way to celebrate that than by opening it to the public.”