Tower of London
Friday 20 June. Back early from holiday in the South of France to film the next sequence in the Timewatch documentary I’m presenting about an Elizabethan wreck. I’m at the Tower of London to film the arrival of the cannon we salvaged off Alderney a week earlier, but there’s just one problem. Mensun (the marine archeologist) has alerted the media and two channels (BBC and ITV local news) have sent film crews to cover the great event. Not only that, the public have been invited to watch so the whole thing is a bit of a scrum.
The original director Dan is self-shooting for this sequence, his pregnant wife having been given the all-clear, so it’s just as well the Tower’s press office give us priority over the other crews. Dan tells me to be as hands-on as possible as the cannon are being manoeuvred from a truck onto a wooden trolley, and then wheeled inside the tower where a custom made water-tank is waiting to receive them. I take him at his word, and almost get my toe run over by the trolley (the young son of Russell, one of the English divers, is less fortunate and an ambulance is called; but it turns out to be just bad bruising, thank God). It’s not easy trying to speak to camera as you’re helping to push one and a half tons of cannon into the Tower, surrounded by press and public, but I manage it to Dan’s satisfaction. The bad news is that the lifting gear hired from HSS is not up to the job and by the end of the shoot the cannons still aren’t in the tank. I do a final PTC explaining the problem, and can’t help alluding to the typically British Heath-Robinson contraption that we’re using to move the cannon.
Filming over, I suggest to the Belgian divers, who’ve escorted the guns over from Alderney, that they join me later for a drink. Big mistake. We arrange to meet in Soho at 10pm, and I finally track them down in the Admiral Duncan pub. ‘Didn’t you realize this is a gay bar?’ I ask them. ‘No,’ came the answer. ‘But we thought it was a bit odd there are no women.’ We move on to a straight pub, and five hours later they’re still going strong, fuelled by far too many pints of Stella. I tell them it’s called ‘wifebeater’ in England on account of its strength; Dirk replies, ‘That’s all right, the only person who gets beaten in my house is me!’ I finally make my excuses and leave them to it; they can’t get back on to their boat until 6 so they have no option but to keep going. I’m in bed by 3.30, but still suffer from a shocking hangover in the morning. Next time I’ll keep my mouth shut.