Mike Giles
At midnight (01 January 2017) my tipple will be a Calvados…
Dave Mundy
Calvados brings back happy memories of a D-Day anniversary in Arromanches with my OB truck (among many OB vans) and being billeted in a farmhouse which was being converted into holiday flats. The wife of the owner had stocked our fridge with loads of eggs, bacon, bread etc. and a huge bowl of local grown cherries on the table every day. She mentioned that her brother made his own Calvados, and having shown an interest (as you do!) she left us a bottle every day. Needless to say, the liqueur reminded me of Nitromors paint stripper, however the evenings did become more enjoyable! I was dishing up several full-English breakfasts for evening meals on many nights as we were literally in the middle of nowhere.
Pat Heigham
That engenders a memory…
Working on "Music in Time" for Channel 4, we (including Nick Ware) found ourselves in Prague, but, on a location further east for a folk group recording, our location ‘fixer’ hi-jacked us to call on a friend of his in a local village.
The friend was busy hoeing his vegetables, but hospitably invited us in to his cellar, where there were a goodly number of barrels arranged round the walls. His wife was summoned to suck up with a litre (!) pipette, the contents of each in turn, and deftly spurted a wineglass full from under her thumb on the bottom of the pipe.
There were about ten white wines, and I think, five reds. We thought that was it, until he introduced us to the schnapps!
Disaster!
Sadly no photos exist, and the camera was still in the car!
Nick Ware
It was a lot more than ten whites as I remember it!
We had been driven in two chauffeur driven Mercedes limos to some remote rural part of Moravia near Brno, and I think our fixer Ladisklav saw it as an opportunity to take us on a circuitous return route via his brother’s vineyard. I didn’t take any photos (oh, for iPhones then), but I can still see it all vividly today (35 years ago!).
As we got more and more sloshed, it all got a bit serious when our host launched into a long and earnest speech on how grateful his country was for the part the British had played in saving Czechoslovakia from the Nazis at the end of WW2. Speech over, it was our turn to return the sentiment, and we all looked to our Director for his response (he being the eldest of us, and our team leader). He (I won’t name him this time!) raised his glass, and gently slid under the table, completely sozzled and incapable of speech of any kind! Second in command to the rescue, cameraman Barry Noakes did the honours, then at the mention of the Schnapps, we made our excuses to resume our drive back to the Prague Intercontinental.
On the way back, said director wanted to stop for a pee, so we stopped by the roadside in the middle of nowhere. My lasting memory of that journey was the sight of him peeing into what looked like a field of giant rhubarb. Unable to stand without help, he fell forward into what turned out to be a 10ft deep irrigation ditch hidden beneath the rhubarb leaves. We somehow managed to find him and drag him out. Our unit manager, Arnie Ross, well used to working with Michael Winner and sacking crew members for the slightest misdemeanour, took off his wet clothes and put him to bed, blaming us for letting him get in that state (as-if…..).
Next morning, he bounced back, 100 percent compos mentis and back in control, and off we went to film an excerpt from Don Giovanni in the theatre where it was first performed, and then on for a full scale performance of the Verdi Requiem in St Vitus Cathedral, with the huge chorus and orchestra of the La Scala Milan under conductor, Vaclav Neumann.
I’ll never know how, but somehow we pulled it off, but I wish I could say I was as non-hungover as our leader!
Pat Heigham
Nick’s memory is better than mine – I had forgotten the rhubarb leaves!
I now recall the multiple toasts to Churchill, the then King, and others…
The Don Giovanni and Verdi, I do remember vividly. We had just finished rigging in the Tyl theatre, Prague, ready to shoot a chunk of Don Giovanni for “Music in Time” – I think that Barry, cameraman, had a problem with exposure, as the theatre was as dim as two candles.
As we were departing for the hotel for a brief rest before the evening session, our splendid director bounced in, announcing that he had encountered Claudio Abbado in our hotel who was conducting the Verdi Requiem in the cathedral (I think that Vaclav Neumann was i.c. the Czech Philharmonic for which we had recorded Smetana in the Dvorak Hall, earlier).
Our man managed to get permission to record a bit of the Verdi, but the Czech film fixer ducked away, as the concert was under Czech TV and he had no influence there. Anyway we derigged and hightailed it to the Cathedral, difficult – we did not have our own self drive transport, it was taxis!
Bowling in, we liased with the TV crew, who kindly made room on their rostra for our two 16mm film cameras, and at Nick’s request, to put the main orchestral stereo mic just behind the conductor, I marched down the aisle and plonked it in place – it completely screwed their main wide
shot, but no-one said a dicky bird! Perhaps our director had mentioned UK TV…
Nick had a thumping headache, and all he wanted was a mains feed for the portable Neve Soundesk. St.Vitus cathedral was not well equipped with mains outlets behind the pillars, but I found a mains splitter under one of the TV camera rostrums, plugged in and prayed that it wasn’t on a dimmer circuit!
After that, of course, we had to de-rig and get back to the Tyl theatre for the Don Giovanni that evening – bit of a haul, that day!
