My Bizarre day with DD

View · by **BillShipton** » 20 May 2006, 14:39

Phew!!!

It's been an amazing week at the studio thanks to Bizarre and DD's first visit to the home of SPLOSH! A lot of setting up and cleaning up but a great deal of fun too, and DD is great to work with: funny, tolerant and very talented.

But it all started as a bit of a nightmare....

One thing you don't want at 8pm the night before a sweet model is coming all the way from Belfast arriving at 9am, and Bizarre are turning up with a journalist, photographer and and their own model at 11am is the shower breaking!

But that's what happened! No hot water at all. Furthermore our plumber was working in London so the prospect of either cancelling everything, giving them hypothermia or paying massive emergency call-out charges loomed large. Thankfully the pub mafia did its bit. A call to the Fountain found a plumber who took the shower apart and put it back for a tenner. He couldn't mend it - but he knew a man who would install a new one at 7.30am! So thanks to Steve and Andy, we were running hot again by 10am.

DD arrived as he was finishing off. She had been travelling for about 10 hours but was as bright as ever. Talk about a baptism of fire. Her first professional session was going to be for a national high street magazine that same day, followed by two more sessions the day after (one with the manic Mouse). How would she cope? Fantastically, it turned out.

Bizarre arrived at 11.30. Denise turned out to be a sweet blonde woman in a SpongeBob teeshirt (a good sign I thought). Her photographer, Joe, was a slightly camp guy whose first words were "Is there anywhere DRY to put my gear down." I tried to explain about the shower but don't think he was listening. Their model was slim, dark and very sweet-natured - though I got the feeling early on she had no idea what she'd volunteered for!

The next promising sign was that Denise (given a budget from Bizarre) had bought a whole branch of Tescos with her. After substituting the products that we could make up easier with our stocks (catering Angerl Delight uses water not milk) and making up some multi-coloured bowls of cake mix just for the hell of it, we were ready to go. Though, as expected, the photographer wasn't, so after moving the building a few feet to the left, ("There isn't a lot of ROOM!" he whinged having filled up every space with lights, huge batteries and his ipod-based beatbox which he insisted played in the background cos he must have MUSIC - Radio 2 not being to his taste apparently), we finally got going.

With Denise now in a short skirt and top, their lady in the obligatory skimpy gear and DD's DDs in something dark and bouncy they started. Being stills it was all stop-and-start, but Denise soon disappeared under a couple of colours of cake mix, her short skirt coated in several layers of custard. As she said, she got a nice big pie in the face from DD. In response, DD was pelted and plastered with everything they'd brought, lying at one point topless in the pool having all sorts of mess poured over her simultaneously. Our slim new girl was getting splashed rather than splattered but, hey, she was joining in.

Okay, we knew their attempts to capture a pie flying through the air would be doomed to failure, and the marshmallows are now on the banned list (you can't flush them away, they float, and had to go down the drain in the road at 10pm). But Denise not only got messy, she stayed messy for over an hour as the photographer fiddled around. DD wound nearly as messy - and got her puppies out - and had exactly the right facial expression every time the camera clicked. And our work experience girl (now, that's what I call an experience!) though not that messy was very easy going even when her knickers were repeatedly filled and bottom battered in endless attempts to get a good splat for the camera. Oh, and I got a pie on the head for a portrait pic...

Most importantly, they didn't mind me videoing bits of the action (albeit from the side) and have promsed us use of their photos when they are ready. So....you will get to see what happened both in movie and stills form on the site soon (in thre Free House, of course). Some stills from the vid will appear as soon as I get them to Hayley!

Oh, and the new shower works perfectly.

They left some time around 4pm, and after getting cleaned up, DD and I went to the pub. We had three pints then decided she should check into her B&B whilst I sorted the studio for the next day's fun. We arranged to meet up again in my local at nine. Unfortunately, DD's travelling and my shower shambles took their toll. We both fell asleep and woke up after closing time!

But the best day was to come....however I'll save that story for another time.