Tuesday 15 November 2011

Top Gear Live





The legendary Top Gear Cool Wall

Can’t believe how quiet I’ve been on the blog in the last week, I’ve literally just not had the chance to stop and blog. On Thursday I got fantastic news that I’d been invited as press to the Top Gear Live show. Being in Birmingham, and me myself being in Southampton I turned the tickets down, it was going to cost the best part of £100 to get there and I didn’t think it was worth the expense. But of course, as soon as the fella found out about my invite he made it pretty obvious that we were going to this show no matter what. Which is all well and good, except I was nowhere near ready to uproot and go to Birmingham! Unsurprisingly at about 21:42 on Thursday night I was on a train making the first part of our journey to Birmingham – home to Hertfordshire to pick up the car ready to leave at stupid o’clock on Friday morning. All the awful travelling and subsequent arguments with Mr Smith aside we had a lovely weekend. The show was amazing and walking around as press was quite empowering! I managed to get some beautiful shots of the exhibition that accompanied the live shows and the cars there were pretty impressive.

WARNING: spoilers of the show if you're planning to go in London!




I’m not a big car girl myself, I’ve never understood the need to spend anything more than 10k plus on a car, and people showing off with their amazing cars turns me off more than it turns me on. Nevertheless I did love seeing all the amazing Top Gear Challenge cars that had been modified and more often, trashed during their crazy antics. A big fave of mine was seeing the cars they used to go and see Baby Jesus, aka Baby Stig in the Christmas special last year.

The famous threesome had their own live show there, which was their version of the Olympics, which was absolutely hilarious. Apparently the Top Gear lads have a huge hatred of the Olympics, and with no desire to visit London in 2012, they created their own more exciting version - complete with opening ceremony and lighting of the Olympic torch (aka Cars). It involved the three of them doing various modified Olympic sports such as Curling, where they hurled at each other in cars bashing each other to the center of the target and Chariot Racing where instead of horses they had 4 mopeds attached to a little seat. They created a Olympic Beauty Pageant, claiming that ugly competitors would lose points if, and I quote Clarkson "If their face looked like a shovel". They even had a version of their famous Top Gear set on wheels! Jeremy had a steering wheel in between his legs and a hand break at the side and they drove themselves around the arena. Absolutely fantastic fun and a great laugh. There were two live shows this year, in a separate arena on the other side of the arena, Top Gear has built their own indoor track which they used to set hot laps on, drag race old cars against their brand new siblings, and of course let Stig loose to make some magic happen.




Jeremy's car used in the Christmas Top Gear Special 2010

We also invested in the equivalent of a Go-Pro camera. At the show there were several stands where you could buy specialist sports filming equipment and I fell in love with a Veho 1080 HD camera. We got an absolute bargain, as well as a ton of accessories and a wireless speaker that I’ve been dying to get my hands on for ages! Even at a car show I manage to spend, spend, spend!

Because we were home for the weekend, well two days, we also both got to spend some time with both our families and after the whole burglar situation last weekend I was dying for a hug with my dad. It was fantastic to see my baby brother and sister even if it was just for a few hours! It always makes me happy that they still remember me and I get tons of hugs and kisses and love! I took a camera with me and got some priceless footage of them both having fun!

So a busy weekend for me, followed by an important pitch on Monday morning for our busking documentary! We were in the presence of our lecturers as well as Kate O’Driscoll, who gave us a fantastic talk on documentary film making. More on that will come from me in the future I’m sure! Bye for now!



The Top Gear beauty pageant! Apparently ugly Olympians should lose points!
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