ONE of Dorset’s best-known brand names received unexpected coast-to-coast exposure in America when it featured prominently in a sketch on Saturday Night Live.

Luxury paint and wallpaper maker Farrow & Ball was featured in the show, prompting some US viewers to wonder whether the brand really existed.

A sketch featured Aidy Bryant as an unemployed woman showing off her home decor to a couple played by guest host Kristen Stewart and series regular Beck Bennett.

Holding up a can of Farrow & Ball paint, made at Ferndown’s Uddens Estate, Bryant declares: “It’s the high end British paint company that offers unparalleled depth and colour.

“That colour on the baseboard there is Ammonite, named after the fossils often found on the Dorset coast.

“And the wall colour, well that’s Lulworth blue, named after the swirling British mists of the beautiful Lulworth Cove.”

The sketch goes on to poke fun at the “out of work day bar tender” – who prefers to call herself an “aspiring estate manager” – for spending 110 US dollars for each gallon can of the paint.

As the woman’s style-conscious life is revealed to be a sham, Bennett tells her: “You are living in a dreamworld and you have painted it in this jackass million dollar paint.”

The sketch ends in a parody of a commercial, with the strapline “Farrow & Ball – each colour tells a story”.

Saturday Night Live, now in its 45th season, has been playing to audiences of more than six million in recent times, with many more watching sketches online afterwards. The Farrow & Ball sketch had amassed more than 800,000 views on YouTube as of Monday afternoon.

Despite the prominent positioning of its paint cans in the show, the references to Farrow & Ball were not a case of commercial product placement.

Farrow & Ball chief executive Anthony Davey said: “It was a fantastic surprise to see the Farrow & Ball sketch on Saturday Night Live this weekend, we have had a really positive response from the public and saw a big spike in our web traffic over the weekend which shows it really got people interested in finding out more.”

A number of viewers said on social media that they had Googled to find out if the brand was real.

Farrow & Ball tweeted a link to its catalogue, from which the descriptions in the sketch were drawn, and said: “It’s true, we really do offer an unparalleled depth in ‘col-our’. So whether you’re an out-of-work day bartender or an aspiring estate manager, discover our 132 colours here.”