The Revenge of Captain Bizarro

My girlfriend and I were eating dinner outside on a balmy Friday evening in August when it happened. As I rose from the table to clear the plates I heard a voice exclaim from the neighbouring garden.

‘He'd be perfect!’

I looked over to see a group of women holding drinks. One of them, a glamorous looking middle-aged woman with red hair, was gesturing excitedly and pointing at me. I have never had those words shouted at me over a garden wall. Over any wall, for that matter. I was intrigued and walked over to find out what it was I was supposedly perfect for. The women were not wearing amulets or animal skins, so I was reasonably confident I had not been selected for a shamanic ritual.

Down to business

The woman introduced herself and handed me a business card. Orange and yellow lines radiated from one corner of the card like sunbeams and on the lines were written the words, 

“Camilla Arthur Casting”.

‘Can you do an Australian accent?’ she asked me.

Now, I have been told by my Australian flatmate that my Antipodean impersonation is ‘a bit bogan (which means scally) but passable’. Emboldened by the memory of this glowing endorsement I proceeded to unleash my finest stereotyping.

‘Yea mate. I'm Australian and I love barbecues.’

Camilla’s face lit up and she turned back to the gaggle of women, giving them a double thumbs up.

“Are you free next Wednesday? There's something I'd like to put you forward for.”

Checking her credentials

Over the next couple of days, I began to receive emails from Camilla. I looked at her website and read about the campaigns she had recruited people for. I learned the term ‘street casting’, which means finding normal people, not trained actors, who might be good for a brand's campaign. The second email had an attachment with a heading in block capitals:

CASTING BRIEF FOR KOREAN ELECTRICAL VIDEO

The brief was to play Dave, an over-enthusiastic Australian cameraman. Dave is excited to be making a Youtube video about his new invention; a mini steady cam called the Galluscam300 that he been testing using a headpiece attached to his pet chicken, Laura.

Right. This definitely ranks up there with the strangest emails I have ever read. But unlike the plea from the son of the exiled ruler of Omanistan to allow him to place some funds in my account ‘for security’, this was not one to ignore. I read on. Whoever ended up being chosen as Dave would be starring in a viral video for LG phones, taking part in a two day shoot in Amsterdam and getting paid £2,000 for their trouble. It sounded like fun.

The final email I received from Camilla had text only in the subject line:

‘PS Olly, can you look kinda rough and rugged at the casting’

Dedicated to the cause

As luck would have it, I went camping the night before the casting (see previous post ‘Eight go wild in Berkshire’) and so I had a veneer of outdoor grime and the fusty odour of a cameraman recently returned from an extreme filming expedition. I arrived late, flustered and sweaty, hoping that my greasy sheen would only add to the authenticity of my look; cargo shorts and check shirt with casually rolled up sleeves and the kind of trainers cum walking shoes, so loved by film crews, that say, ‘my job is ACTIVE involving lots of ACTION and definitely MUCH cooler than yours’.

I was also lugging my camping gear in a large North Face holdall and had practiced being Dave after a few drinks the previous night. Never before has this level of Daniel Day Lewis like rigour been applied to preparation for a viral video casting.

At the entrance to the building, I paused to compose myself. I figured I should start as I meant to go on and so I strode into reception and launched straight into character.

‘G’day mate. I’m here for the casting?’ I ended my sentence with the upward inflection that turns every Aussie sentence into a question.

The guy muttered directions without looking up from his paper. I had fooled the receptionist. It was a good start.

Through the looking glass

I followed the corridor along and down, passing a bloke on the stairs who gave me a wry smile as we passed. Was he a Dave? It felt like I was in a surreal world full of cameraman wannabes, dreaming of a fast buck and a free trip to Holland.

As I opened the door with the words Casting Cabin on a plaque, Camilla skipped across the floor to greet me and my cover was immediately blown.

‘Olly, daaarling! Thank you so much for coming.’

I was taken aback and suffered a temporary split personality disorder, unsure whether to respond in character. My real self won over, I answered in my normal voice and then silently cursed my lack of resolve. ‘Dammit,’ I thought. ‘Stay focused. Channel Dave.’

I was given a form to fill in. The usual stuff: address, phone number, agent’s name, head size. I left the last two blank. I looked around the waiting room of the casting studio and observed that I was not alone; there were two other Daves. Both of them were real Australians, all suntans and 'no worries', and one, a burly fellow wearing flip flops, looked exactly like a cameraman who’d just got back from testing his gear to the max filming Ukrainian cliff top boxing. If I had any chance at all, which I suspected I did not, I was going to have to out Australian some Australians.

Eventually I was called into the studio, a large windowless square with exposed brickwork on every wall apart from the one in front of the camera, which had been painted white. There were two techy guys hunched over monitors, a mysterious man wearing shades sat on a deep sofa that looked impossible to get up from and the only person Camilla introduced me to; the Dutch director, Willem.

When the filming starting, Camilla was going to prompt me with some questions and then I was to ad-lib the character. I have never done anything like this before but I have been unwittingly preparing for several years by tormenting my girlfriend with demented characters and silly voices. She assures me that enduring my barrage of bullcrap is giving her frown lines. 'Showing off' she calls it. I was getting ready for one almighty show off.

Time to shine

I stood in front of the camera against the whitewashed wall. I was nervous, but raring to go. I bounced from foot to foot, rubbed my sweaty palms together and ran my tongue over my dry lips.

‘And…ACTION!’

‘So, Dave. Tell us a bit about yourself and your life as a cameraman.’

It was like opening the stable door to a horny stallion. I was off, rattling away in a high speed bogan brogue about how filming was my life. I made up fantasies about a recent trip to Mongolia and waxed lyrical about my sidekick, Laura the chicken. I was actually getting laughs with this stuff and that spurred me on even more. I ranted about the Galluscam300 and how it was going to change the film industry forever, earnestly expressing how proud I was to be sharing it with my internet buddies.

I paused for breath and Camilla rushed forward with a glass of water. I gulped it down.

‘That’s great, Dave. Tell us how you designed the Galluscam and the adventures you had along the way.’

The question had the same effect as jabbing a cattle prod into the side of an angry bull. I began again, waving my arms around and gesticulating towards the camera and my imaginary audience. I was genuinely excited about the utter rubbish I was spouting. I prattled on about the Heath Robinson contraptions I had built in my shed and how many times I had nearly killed Laura during my search to get the perfect shot.

Cheers for the nonsense

Finally the stream of farce began to run dry. I rounded off by thanking ‘the web heads’ and imploring them to ‘check back soon for the latest’. I ended with a suitably cheesy two-handed point at the camera and a manic grin.My heart was racing and sweat ran down into my eyes. The director shook my hand on the way out and I felt like I had done a good job. Probably nothing would come of it but at least it had been fun. I said goodbye to Camilla and went to catch the bus home.

What are the chances

The next day Camilla phoned me.

‘Olly, it’s f*cking brilliant,’ Camilla likes to swear. ‘You’re down to the last four!’

I was shocked. They had seen 26 guys in total at the casting, most of them real Australians. Maybe I did have a chance after all. Camilla tempered my excitement.

‘We’ll find out more tomorrow but, you know, even making it to the final four is f*cking amazing.’

This is the language of someone well rehearsed in preparing people for disappointment. It is true that I would be more disappointed now, having made it onto the shortlist. The next day was the Friday of August bank holiday weekend. I was in the office, looking forward to a few days camping. It was about 11.30 when I got a text from Camilla.

Olly – this is very important.

You're down to the final two.

But they've decided they don’t

want an Australian. They want

an English guy. Can you call

the director straight away and

arrange to go to his flat for a

second casting. Let me know

as soon as you have spoken

to him. F*cking brilliant,

Camilla xoxoxo

Another twist of fate

I laughed out loud. This is was unbelievable. Just when everyone thought Captain Bizarro was dead, he had kicked down the door and stormed in, ready to wreak a terrible revenge. This development distracted me more than a little from my spreadsheets and I immediately ran into the bathroom to call the director.

‘Willem? Hi, it’s Olly. Yes, it’s great news. Hackney Road you say? Fantastic, I can be there at 1.15. Same brief but English? Okay, that’s fine. I'm not dressed like a cameraman today though, is that a problem? No? Okay, see you soon.’

My mind raced over the routine I had invented a couple of days earlier. Same brief but English. In my head the words sounded Australian and I found putting on an accent made it much easier to play Dave, with his overabundance of enthusiasm. I also wasn't sure if paying the director a home visit was normal. I hoped it wasn't an elaborate ploy to induct me into some kind of Nazi sex ring. Before dashing out of the office, I scribbled the address on a pad and made sure my colleagues knew where I had gone, just in case.

Second time lucky

I jumped on my bike and cycled from Moorgate to Hackney Road, rehearsing as I rode.

‘Hi, my name’s Dave and I’m a cameraman. I’ve being filming for 10 years and it's my life.’

For some reason the new, English Dave sounded like Bear Grylls. I wondered if it would help my chances of getting the job if I staggered into the director's flat muttering, 'must…keep…going'  and took a bite out of his cat. Willem buzzed me into his smart apartment block and told me to come up to the second floor. There was no one else in the apartment and no camera equipment visible anywhere. My spidey senses were tingling and Willem must have noticed me peering around with a furrowed brow because he said,

‘I know, I'm a director and I don’t have any cameras. It's ridiculous!’

Setting the standard

I kept my eyes peeled for Nazis. The professional set up involved Willem balancing his iPhone on a broom handle and standing on the sofa to film. I was wearing standard office attire of polo shirt and chinos so Willem offered me his rain jacket to make me a look a bit more like a cameraman working in the elements. The apartment was already quite warm and once snug under a few layers of Gore Tex, I began to sweat profusely.

A wooden carving on the coffee table kindly stood in as Laura the chicken and I did 3 takes, taking instructions in-between and trying to provide a consistently high level of nonsense. The English Dave felt more serious, less ‘kinda crazy’. Perhaps they’d go full circle and end up with an Australian pretending to be English.

Back in the office, I tried to concentrate on my work. At about 2.30 I got a phone call.

‘Olly? Hi. My name's Hein, I’m calling from Amsterdam. Do you know your head size? In case you get the job we're gonna need your head size for the helmet.’

‘Um…no. But I can find out. I’ll call you back!’

Earning my keep

I immediately began scrabbling around for a tape measure. I pulled open desk drawers and churned up the contents. There was no tape measure anywhere but I did find a piece of string. I could use the ancient technique of holding a length of string around your head and then laying the string flat and measuring it with a ruler. Genius. At the precise moment I was holding the string around my head, concentrating hard, probably with my tongue sticking out of my mouth, my boss walked down the corridor. He gave me a look as if to say, ‘Who the hell hired you?’ I smiled. Soon enough, I knew that I had a 56cm head. I phoned Hein and told him what he needed to know.

Getting away from it all

Now there was nothing left to do but wait. My girlfriend and I drove to Pembrokeshire that evening and spent the weekend in the glorious surroundings of South Wales. The phone didn't ring. It didn't ring on Saturday or Sunday. It didn't ring on Monday as we lay on a huge sandy beach in the warm sun and steeled ourselves for the 6-hour drive home. Finally, I cracked and texted Camilla to ask if she’d heard anything.

A little while later, as we drove down the motorway, my phone beeped.

‘Olly – sorry. I just found out

they went with the other guy.

You did great though. I’m

f*cking proud of myself for

spotting you over the garden

wall xxx’

I pulled over at the nearest shop I could find, bought a bottle of whisky and began drinking heavily.

‘I could have been somebody!’ I hollered skywards as my girlfriend tried to sooth me.

Once I had recovered from the crushing disappointment, back on the motorway I soothed myself with a long, nonsensical monologue in a Southern States drawl. From now on, I tell my girlfriend, I have every excuse to give voice to the weirdoes in my head. I'm practicing for my next role. 

Willem Gerritsen is the director whose flat I wound up in and Liquid Mountaineering is a short documentary he shot. Enjoy...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oe3St1GgoHQ

Eight go wild in Berkshire - camping with colleagues

“What’s all that stuff around your desks?” Asked a colleague in the kitchen as we waited for the kettle to boil.

 “We're going camping,” I replied.

The look on his face was quizzical. “On a Tuesday night? Together?”

“Yep. We're having micro-adventure*.”

Potential for disaster

I love camping but I've never been with my workmates and never on a school night, heading straight back into the office the next day. It was either going to be a fun and interesting way to spend a Tuesday night, or a complete disaster resulting in mass resignations.

Thankfully this wacky plan had not been devised as an official team bonder, with specific tasks designed to practice skills like ‘leadership’, ‘teamwork’ and ‘covert infiltration’. It was more of an extended social event, which, amazingly, and perhaps foolishly, the whole team had signed up to.

The original idea was to wild camp but there is nowhere ‘wild’ a short train ride from London where 8 people can subtly pitch tents and spend the night. I pictured a bedraggled horde of my bleary eyed colleagues staggering along in the glare of a tractor’s spotlights, being marshalled back to train station by an angry farmer at 3 am.

The wilds of Berkshire

We did contact a farmer and ask if we could use his field but he was worried about the ‘mess’ we might make. So, we found a sweet little campsite next to a lock on the Thames in the commuter belt haven of Cookham, Berkshire.

Two of the team had never been camping, so tents were borrowed and rollmats bought. We joked, at their expense, about foraging for food and, more alarmingly, gathering wood for sacrificial pyres. I pictured a Battle Royale or Hunger Games type scenario; a fight to the death in the woods with whatever weapons we could lay our hands on. In reality, there was little chance of death. Perhaps there was more chance of alcohol and the campsite’s proximity to water combining, resulting in a skinny-dipping event and those mass resignations I previously mentioned.

We piled out of the office at half 5 and onto the tube to Paddington, where we caught the train to Cookham. Laden as we were with bags and tents it looked like we were heading off for a month in the Himalayas, not one night under the stars. We squeezed in with the commuters, who were no doubt bound for a night of chicken kievs and bad telly, smug in the knowledge that this was no ordinary Tuesday.

Taking it seriously

0.8 miles is not far, but I regretted not attaching the shoulder straps to my holdall. The thin handles of the heavy bag dug into me as we made our way from the station, through the village towards the campsite. Being one of only two men in the team of eight, there was no way I could lose face by displaying my discomfort. It was paramount to appear unruffled at all times and demonstrate the quiet confidence of a seasoned expeditionary. That is why, along with food, clothes and cider, I had packed a hunting bow, a flare gun and an inflatable raft. You might think this excessive but if disaster were to befall us in the form of, say, a gang of wayward youth on the rampage, I could fend them off with the bow, alert the community to our plight with the flare gun and then paddle the team to safety, after inflating the raft. Stranger things have happened and it pays to be prepared.

A watery past

It is at Cookham where the River Thames meets the Chiltern chalk, causing it to make a sharp turn to the south. Centuries ago this area would have been a maze of narrow river channels, between wooded, marshy islands. Chalkstones fell from the sides of the river and barges were sunk so the first lock was built in 1830 to control the lively interaction between land and water. Fast forward to the 21^st century and thanks to the Environment Agency, certain locks on the Thames can now be used for camping and Cookham is one of the most picturesque.

We crossed over a roaring weir, beneath which three men sat just beyond the tumbling water, keeping a watchful eye on their fishing rods. The campsite was simple and pleasant in its unfussiness; an expanse of grass bordered by the lock on one side and a field of cows on the other. I thought of my bow and wondered how long a whole cow would take to cook on the disposable barbecue we had brought with us.

Here's to freedom

Tents were pitched, ciders were cracked and we raised a glass to camping on a school night. The sun shone down on our green enclave next to the Thames and it felt good to have escaped the metropolis for an evening amongst nature. I pondered which would be the best tree to shin up to get a good signal on the satellite phone and where would be the most advantageous spot to position the water filtration system, but I soon became distracted by shovelling crisps and hummus into my face.

Life in the camp hummed to the natural rhythm and my male colleague Richard and I soon found ourselves hunched over the disposable barbecue monitoring the burgers. No words were needed; a low grunt and a jab of the finger indicated when a piece of meat needed turning and a successful flip and the resulting sizzle caused a satisfied grunt of approval. This was man work, as it has always been.

The wine flowed and my hip flask was passed around. We played that most ancient of camping games; Heads Up on the Iphone. It’s a good one. You choose a category, famous people for example and, holding the phone on your forehead, try to guess the name from the clues being shouted at you by your friends. Guess right and tilt the phone forward to bring up another name. Great fun until the battery dies. I was dissuaded from firing up my portable generator due to some ridiculous concern over noise.

Under blue moon...

The cool glow of a full moon cast long shadows through the trees and the evening mellowed towards bedtime at around midnight. The ladies retired to their giant, multi-room tents for a night of spacious luxury. As they settled down I could hear them shouting from one end of their cavernous abodes to the other. Things like, “Where’s my pillow?” and “I think you left it downstairs.”

Meanwhile, Richard and I cosied up in our tiny, storm-proof, two-manner. He was not thrilled when I warned him that I occasionally suffer from ‘night terrors’, with accompanying thrashing and moaning. He was no doubt hoping for a little more room to avoid an elbow or knee in the back but I knew we would have the last laugh if a typhoon were to hit Cookham. We would be safe and dry while the ladies portable mansions would be wrenched from their pegs and blown away into a herd of stampeding cows.

Waking up naturally

We rose, groggy, to a beautiful dawn. Low swathes of mist rolled across the stillness of the fields while a lone heron stood like a sentry on the edge of the lock. This was a very different waking experience to the usual squeal of buses’ airbrakes on Dalston Lane in London. Back on the train with the well-scrubbed commuters and we wore our dishevelment, and aroma, with pride. We had survived, in fact immensely enjoyed, our micro-adventure and there was very little chance of any P45s being issued. Unless one of my colleagues has been so inspired by the experience that they decide to jack in the nine to five and become a lama farmer in Peru. That remains to be seen.

Recipe for success

This trip was a success because we all get on well as a team and we have previously spent some time socialising out of work. For work teams where the dynamic is less easy, this might be the perfect idea of hell. The term ‘bonding’ has been sadly sterilised by its use in the corporate environment but it is nevertheless the correct one to describe this experience. There are of course different levels of seniority within my team and there is one ‘head of’ but the hierarchy is not a stifling one and the atmosphere in the office is relaxed. This translated to the campsite where it everyone was able to enjoy themselves as friends.

In summary, if you get on with your work mates and fancy doing something a bit different; go camping with them on a weeknight. Just don’t forget your bow.

*Our micro-adventure was inspired by a talk given by a true adventurer Alastair Humphreys. Read more about his exciting escapades here...http://www.alastairhumphreys.com/