Filming Tweedy the Clown

As any Doctor Who fan will know - all timelines converge on Donna Noble.

In my case, all timelines converge on Cheltenham, which is where I found myself a couple of weeks ago, on a grey, rainy morning in April. It's where we filmed Theo the Mouse. It's where I pass through every time we hold a Sooty summit. This time, I was on my way to meet a clown - Tweedy, to his friends. I was concerned we wouldn't recognise each other, having never met before, but given his dazzling quiff of red hair and my deadpan demeanour, there was little danger of that!

He'd asked me to film and edit a short 'episode' of his show, written by himself and a chap called Andrew Emerson, in which the unfortunate Tweedy the Clown finds himself working in a theatre as a stagehand for the somewhat uppity Mr. Boss, played by Richard Alan. They are awaiting the arrival of a high-profile singer, (I like to think it was Lily Allen), whose extravagant list of requirements sends the poor clown into a bit of a spin.

Tweedy had secured a wonderful location for the 7 hour shoot - a theatre just a few minutes from the town centre - and a dream environment if ever there was one. No background noise, no freak weather, just the actors, the props and the stage lights, which the in-house technicians very kindly set up for us. And then they left us to it. That was it - we were away! Tweedy and Richard took to the stage and started running through their lines, (the interplay between these two characters accounts for roughly half the minisode.) During a break, Tweedy admitted he was most concerned about shooting the dialogue, not the slapstick. I admitted I was most concerned about shooting the slapstick, not the dialogue! Between us - we had it covered! (I hoped!) I'd been a little antsy because I'd never shot this kind of material before. Tweedy was climbing up a stepladder, swinging off a stepladder, walking a stepladder across the stage, running in circles with his signature broom... It required a lot of fast camera moves and I wanted to make sure I did the work justice.

I think I did. Well - I got paid anyway!

Even nicer, it was one of those rare occasions in "the Industry" in which we actually wrapped early. A whole 3 hours early, in fact. Always better to have too much time than too little, (gave me chance to munch on a fourth sausage roll.) This was largely down to Tweedy's rigorous preparation. When it came to shooting the quite complex routines, (like, climb up the ladder, fall over, lie flat across the top of the ladder, forward-roll off the other side, swing round, collapse onto the floor), Tweedy just got up and did it, in one take. I could then punch in for a couple of close-ups, and that was it, we could move on.

So yes - great fun, but a very long day with lots of travelling, and lots of asking people to shift out of my reserved seat on the train home, ("Oh - shall I move then...?" came the disheartened reply - happens every time!) Hopefully the finished video will be available for the world to witness soon.

In the meantime, here's a rather good one from Tweedy's YouTube channel. It's a promo for one of his live shows, called Tweedy's Lost Property... Enjoy!