May 22nd - May 28th 2006
Sunday Walworth
Saturday Apprenticed
Friday 101 today
Thursday Wapping
Wednesday Five more things
Tuesday Wapping
Monday Top-spec bitch
Sunday 28th May
Walworth, Spring 2006
Saturday 27th May
The Apprentice: Director's Commentary
Dan: Hello. My name is Dan Adamson. I'm the series editor for this, the second series of The Apprentice.
Hamish: And I'm Hamish Smith, I'm the...
Dan: ..Assistant to the Series Editor. So. Here we are with the opening credits. Lots of helicopter shots of Canary Wharf. You were with them that day, I think, Hamish?
Hamish: Funny story actually, Dan. There was some sort of mix-up with briefing the helicopter pilot. Your new PA... Donna, was it, the one with the impressive...
Dan: Resumé, yes..Ah, now there's Syed, and one of his characteristic vacant sneers, God, the time we spent with him getting those right...
Hamish: And Donna, not the brightest spark obviously, had somehow got it into her head that we needed aerial coverage of the Amstrad HQ, which is, as most people know, in Brentford, so...
Dan: The thing about Syed though, say what you like, he's such a versatile actor. I don't know if you saw his reel? He had a walk-on as an Arab playboy in a mini-series for ATV, no more than a cough and a sneeze really, but...
Hamish: And we got our easts mixed up with our wests and ended up buzzing Heathrow. Ah, now here's Michelle's walk of shame.
Dan: Which we never used, of course. Just as well, really, since she was still a brunette at this stage.
Hamish: And that is Brentford, of course. Between showers. Ah. Enter the Badger.
Dan: I'd really rather not. But yes: the infamous Badger. That was something that really worked, wasn't it? What was she originally down as?
Hamish: Mole, I think. Maureen Mole? Mandy Mole?
Dan: Mandy Mole from Belfast, yes.
Hamish: Spitalfields Market, now, nice bit of CGI. Sometimes you just have to say to hell with the budget and follow your instincts...Tuan there.
Dan: Or Dun.
Hamish: Or Tun. Or Don. Or Ting-Tong, as Badger took to calling him.
Dan: Ansell, there. Make-up's running a bit, if you look closely.
Hamish: It was slapped on in a rush, in a cab on the way back from his bankruptcy hearing. My mum wants her glasses back, by the way.
Dan: Another triumph of last-minute revision. That's something I wonder if viewers appreciate...
Hamish: Thinking on your feet. Or your back, in Dawn's case.
Dan: ..the creativity you need for reality television.
Hamish: It's unreal.
Friday 26th May
Having now successfully stress-tested the upper limit to the number of images of dawn over Canary Wharf that a soul can bear, you'll no doubt be delighted to hear that that particular set of photographs has now come to a conclusion.
A mildly interesting experiment for me, at least, to see how wildly different the same basic view can appear on different mornings - and a pleasant enough series of excursions, leaving the house around 5am to wander through deserted streets down to the wildfowl-haunted river, never knowing if it would be high tide or low tide, or where and when the sun would deign to show itself.
The image below, as well as concluding the series (though not, necessarily, the excursions), also comprises the 101st image on my 'Photographs' page. That has to be a landmark of some sort, though I'm damned if I know quite what...
Thursday 25th May
Wapping, Autumn 2005
Wednesday 24th May
Five more things I dimly remember
(and you probably don't):
Sweet tobacco - has to be one of the most bizarre confectionery offers ever laid before a nation's children. Only now do I appreciate that it was never anything more sinister than coconut shreds dusted with cocoa.
Smelling salts - rummaging secretly through my mother's bedside cabinet I came across a very old and rather decorative little bottle, which I assumed would be perfume. So I opened it and took a deep sniff...
Bayko - one of the many construction kits I played with as a child, this one relied on a scaffolding of tiny steel rods slotted into a perforated base, down which one slid tiny slabs of brickwork, doors, bay-windows and so forth.
I'm a pink toothbrush - you're a blue toothbrush, have we met somewhere before?
Whacko - starring Jimmy Edwards as the public school headmaster (complete with mortar board, gown and cane) and memorably brought to the big screen as, yes, "Bottoms Up!"
Tuesday 23rd May
Wapping, Spring 2006
Monday 22nd May
Another year, another season of Big Brother - and another round of people pulling faces and saying "No, I don't watch it" and then proving curiously up to speed on the foibles and idiosyncracies of the latest crop of housemates.
(And is it just me, or is this year's crop distinctly more intelligent than before?)
(Not a major challenge, admittedly.)
Leaving aside the most interesting features of this year's housemates (the exposed genitalia of Pete and Sezer), my favourite moment so far has been 'Posh George' breaking his quasi-monastic silence to discuss Imogen, and in doing so disclosing the vernacular currently in vogue amongst Old Harrovians:
And I thought, thank you God, top-spec bitch!
......previous week
