Nice Pics Alex, and hopefully Trolly will repost his message in some form or another, his (outside / garage) pics were great too.
Yes the motorbike jump was a bit of a last minute thing - Nick (the rider) only got the call to do it at the start of the week. The bloke who drives the racecar out of the van said that the rider who usually does it once jumped over 17 people laying side by side with no launch ramp, so presumably it normally happens, but for some reason they had to knock this one up in a hurry.
The last couple of days have been a bit of a blur really, I was absolutely knackered today.
On Saturday we managed to do a couple of shows according to the programme, then one of the two projectors that make the 3D video at the end overheated halfway through the 5pm show so there was mad frantic panic. Once they realised the 3D apache sequence was toast they had to find somewhere else to bring Stig on, and they decided to put him in one of the ferraris. Then they had to find him ... That saw two of us and several of them racing around the garage, car park, green rooms, toilets etc looking for him. It all came together with about 30 seconds to spare and the 5pm show ended with the car soccer.
Then the techies went out with a cherrypicker and did something to the projector and pronounced it ok although they weren't happy with the temperature it was running at. The 8pm Saturday show is The Saturday Night show, the showpiece one, the one that you pay huge dollars to get into, so it had to be right. The AV people and the producer decided to leave that projector off until a few minutes before it was needed so it could have a good rest.
The 8pm show got under way and we got up to the car soccer which is almost the end of the show with no problems, halfway through that the AV people got told to turn the second projector on. It wouldn't come on. Oh s**t. There are two projectors up there which are both controlled by one remote control so they had to be REALLY careful what they did trying to get the second one alive in case they inadvertantly turned off the one that was working, the producer was screaming that it was totally not acceptable for the Saturday Night show not to have the Apache, and it all got rather exciting after that.
The soccer which lasts about 5 minutes was nearly over, it was too late to put the Stig in a ferrari, the producer was going mental, the AV people were terrified of turning the good projector off by mistake, and it takes 4 minutes after a projector has been turned off before they can try a restart. Yup, quite exciting.
First thing to do then was buy some time by extending the soccer. After about a quarter of an hour of it the score was something ridiculous, the theatre seriously stank of brakes and clutches, the cars were lurching and bouncing on buggered shocks, the drivers were starting to look a bit glazed and were bouncing off each other more often and harder, so they called that the end of the match. That left Jeremy standing in the middle of the theatre with nothing happening, and he came straight out and told the audience that the reason they'd just seen the longest ever game of indoor car soccer was that one of the two projectors was dead and the producer was still trying to get his s**t together. Then he cracked a few jokes, grabbed a handheld mike and headed up into the audience with another Top Gear Live first, the chance for people to ask anything they wanted about TG.
After he'd answered one question the projector came alive and they went straight into the Apache sequence before it died again, and eventually it all worked out although those people certainly got their money's worth !
That was Saturday. Most of the cast and crew then went to the crew party. Nick the stunt bike rider said he left at 3.30am and he was one of the early ones to leave. There were a few delicate looking people around on Sunday morning including Nick, so the stunt jump over Richard which started off as head to toe then became shoulder to shoulder ended up as knee to knee
Overnight the techs cleaned out the air filters on the projector fans and found them caked almost solid with residue from exhaust fumes. There were a couple of pipes coming down from the ceiling into the projectors, not sure if they were hooked up to the extractors to increase the flow of dirty air through the projectors or to yet another temp aircon unit to pump clean air into the projectors. Whatever they did worked.
Today we had more people than any other day (including our own Naki) so things were better organised, there was very little of the last minute mad scrambles to find people to carry skittles and things. It may have even been so well organised it got a bit boring ! The only hiccup we had was that with about a minute to go we realised that both of the people who'd been doing one of the soccer goalposts weren't there today and we hadn't given the job to anyone else, but we covered that and I ended up out in the arena with nothing between me and 6 nutters in dented suzukis and a 5' soccer ball travelling at up to 50 km/h. Exciting stuff.
We only actually cocked one thing up today, and that was me - on the first show I stalled that damn Porsche. The curtains opened, I got the GO signal to enter the theatre, and ... AAARGH !!! The controller was on the radio asking what the delay was, the backstage manager told her I'd stalled, the car refused to even turn over, then I heard Jeremy crowing something about "He's stalled it, the Porsche has stalled!" and 4000 people laughing. After several years it fired up and out I went with truckloads of revs and clutch slip.
The final show came with stern warnings from the producer not to deviate from the script or programme in any way, it might be the last show but the punters had paid just like all the others and they were entitled to see the same show. So we all behaved, and at Porsche'o'clock I declined the backstage manager's invitation to "do a wheelie when you go out" in favour of just getting the evil damn thing out there first try.
And that was Top Gear Live for 2009. There was a comment on the radio that this was awkward as it's the first time but it'll be easier next year so that's a sign of things to look forward to, anyone interested in helping please form an orderly queue over there .....
And remember, no cameras backstage
Gary
Posted: Thu Feb 05, 2009 12:25 pm
. They took my Aston DBS away but gave me one of the GT2's to drive instead so I didn't complain too hard (and I didn't stall it, thank god), I suppose tomorrow I'll get the Fiat 500 
Whatever, just so long as I can sit in it for 10 minutes with the aircon going full blast before I have to drive it onstage. 
and it's 
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