Lights, Camera, Action...

Sometimes you get some very strange phone calls!!

On Saturday afternoon I received a phone call from a young lady named Samina, who was a colleague of George’s. Who is George I hear you ask? George is a friend of my friend Andrew (the one responsible for me being here in the first place). George is married to Kiran and together they are Karachi’s answer to ‘Richard and Judy’. They present ‘George aur Kiran’ on Arg TV.

Samina had called me because she was looking for a white, middle aged, British man with a British accent. I was able to confirm that I fitted the build, though does 37 count as middle aged?

Samina was looking for this gentleman as she was trying to find an actor to fulfill a small role in a docudrama that her company was filming this weekend in Karachi, and was I interested filling this role. The part was of a rather unhelpful, staff member of the British High Commission (BHC) in Islamabad, who had been called to the Afghani border to help, a British Citizen, of Indian descendent, who had been arrested by the Pakistani authorities with an incorrect visa at the border and then charged with spying.

This is based on the true story of a British journalist, Amardeep Bassey who had travelled to Kabul after September 11th to look at the aftermath.

I decided that all this sounded like a fun, so on Sunday I went to meet some of the production team so that they check out my ‘physical appearance’ to see if I fitted the role. I passed this audition and was invited back to film the scene today. There was no dialogue to learn as we were improvising based on the actually events and so all I had to do was be disinterested and annoyed at being involved in this whole affair. In fact the man from the BHC informed Amardeep, that should he be convicted of the spying charge then he faced 15 years in jail, but at least someone from the BHC would visit him every 12 months to check on him!!

If anyone ever tells you that life on a film set is glamorous then they are wrong. We spent about 90 minutes shooting a scene that will probably last about 3-4 minutes on the screen. We shot the whole thing from 6 different angles, and between each shot my ‘sweat’ was topped up, from a spray bottle!!

It was great fun and Samina has taken my card and may call on me again in the future,

The production was actually being made for the National Geographic Channel and Channel 5, so I will be appearing on a screen near you (if you are resident in the UK) some time in the autumn. The Programme is called ‘Trouble in Paradise’ and this episode 8 ‘Afghanistan’ so watch out for it and let me know what you think.

I’m ready for my close up, Mr B. DeMille…