A day with the BBC

James

Jun 25 |12:52

Last Updated on Mon, 28 Jun 2010 18:08

A day with the BBC

It's only 4 weeks until the start of the rally. 28 days of preparation time remaining. 28 days until we embark on something that none of us will forget. Well, to be more specific, it's about 23 days. You see, island logistics mean we need to leave at least 4 days before - we've got to book the car on the boat and get it back to dry land. There's always the risk of bad weather, as Mother Nature has a habit of throwing a spanner into our carefully planned works.

What with all the excitement currently building at the Scilly Mission camp, as well as the community in general, we had a call a couple of weeks ago from a nice researcher at the BBC's "Inside Out" program (a features and investigation program on regional BBC 1) Duncan had seen our website, and had done some looking around; it seems he had seen the story potential in the rally.

We were asked if they could come over and do a little piece on us on the island of Tresco. Not only was the rally of interest (the concept, the routes, the madness), but also our back stories. After all, we were about to attempt the 10,000 mile challenge across 17 countries - all whilst living on 2 square miles of rock in Atlantic Ocean. James and Will had only passed their driving tests at the beginning of the year, and their driving experiences consisted of going to the mainland to find a car for the rally!

So, skip forward to yesterday - the "Inside Out" director/producer Mick Catmull flew out to see us, armed with the video camera that would no doubt record us describing our brave plight. We met Mick at the pub the night before for a few beers and a chat about what was planned, and 9am the next morning James and Will retrieved the car from it's plinth-like spot and began the day's filming schedule (Mackey was currently passed out on the floor of his bedroom after foolishly doing a multi-island pub crawl).

We did some arty drive by shots of the car, James talked rubbish about the rally whilst attempting to carefully navigate the hoardes of Tresco pedestrians, and the sun shone brightly to provide some beautiful panoramic backdrops of the islands. Mick so joyfully joined us on our voyage across to St Mary's for our injections. James will be especially embarrassed, as his morbid fear of needles meant the footage from inside the "needle room" was interesting to say the least. Mick said it was "good TV!". James has decided he won't be watching. Mackey was rather decent though, and decided to wait outside while the horrors occurred.

The rest of the day was some on-site filming at our workplaces, with some grade A acting by the three of us, as well as a joint interview/chat in front of the sea. We even did our first wheel change whilst precariously balanced next to an 16th century cannon platform on a large hill. Trust me, it looked good. It was about this late in the day when Will forgave Mackey for being drunk through most of it.

The aim of this is to turn this intro filming, and combining it with the footage we'll be masterfully capturing whilst deep in the heart of Asia. The end result? With a bit of luck, some quality evening entertainment worthy to grace our favourite channel. More to come soon!