The Longest Day: It’s A Long Way To Pontypantyfilth. (Being Human Filming, Oct 12th 2012)

With heavy hearts and weary heads we made for Cardiff Bay for our last ever day of Being Human filming. To be fair, the weary heads were due to alcohol and I was surprisingly upbeat on an hours sleep. The filming was taking place on Bute Street at ‘The Old Natwest Building’. Now, when it comes to explaining today it must be noted that there’s some things I can’t talk about. Let’s leave it at that. There have been little bits I’ve decided to leave out of previous posts but it’d be especially wise to leave details out of this one. I know what you’re thinking. Su, Becca and Laura fought a bloody battle to the death and the victor claimed Damien for their own? I’ll leave it down to your imagination. What happens on BH field trips stays on BH field trips. And Twitter. And Facebook. And…

So, where was I? Ah yes, Cardiff Bay. It was a clear blue day and unsurprisingly flipping cold. All the trucks and crew were outside and immediately we knew that it was all indoors again. We stuck at it for a little while but soon our hangovers were catching up with us so went further up the road to a cafe for breakfast because bacon and tea solves everything. Not long after returning to filming Michael Socha turned up but not as Tom though. He was out and about with his girlfriend and very newly born baby in pram. To be clear, his girlfriend wasn’t in the pram. They came over to say hi (the baby said nothing which was rude) and Su engaged Michael’s girlfriend in a detailed discussion on the pros and cons of breast feeding, all the girls cooed over mini Socha and well, I didn’t. Sorry. Anyway off they went and we were outside until the lunch break which was a long time. Jay insulted us some more, Su sang A LOT, we got colder and Polly the runner gave us biscuits. I liked Polly. Once the scene was done out came Mr Rook himself, Steven Robertson and a new Being Human face in Ricky Grover who was wearing this ludicrous tight jumper exposing his belly. Turns out they were shooting the opening scene of episode four set in the basement of the Archives. Off they went in their cars, off we went to have some lunch on the bay because we can only go so long without eating EVEN MORE food. A bit of a nothingness morning all in all. Well, apart from the bit I can’t mention.

The afternoons destination was to be another bit of the archives. The actual archives bit. And what better place to film archives than in an archive? Exactly. The Glamorgan Archives to be precise so we got a taxi out there. The building is directly opposite Cardiff City’s stadium, the imaginatively titled ‘Cardiff City Stadium’. We perched ourselves on some steps and in usual fashion waited (usual fashion means laughing a lot at pointless things). Phil Davies appeared in the suit talking to a member of crew and pointed at us, probably asking if it was ok to come and say hello and he wandered over and did just that. It’s strange because our perception of him was that he was going to be stand offish but he was more than happy to talk to us and have photos taken while waving his walking stick proudly. He told us that Hatch gains strength as the series goes on and we were rather excited by this spoiler. He went back inside and we tried to evaluate what he’d said and then we had a collective “Ooooooh” moment when we realised that the ‘He Will Rise’ tease post series 4 was about Captain Hatch. We got looks for that.

Steven Robertson appeared and everyone waved at him, he waved back as all the girls (not me) shouted repeatedly “We love you Steven!!” while beckoning him over. I swear to God he was going red. The brave man approached us and none of us were expecting THAT accent! He was a total gentleman and as he left to go back inside I suddenly wanted to shout “I love you too Steven!”. They were filming the scene in episode 6 where Hatch confronts Rook in the archives.

We’d been in contact with third AD Ryan through twitter as we had a card for him but he had been office bound for a couple of days. He said he’d try to make it over to us and he did make an appearance. Su handed him the card and said something nice but the moment was ruined as a bird shat on her head at exactly the same time! Perhaps offended we didn’t get it one. Once the Rook/Hatch scene was shot Phil left and it wasn’t long before Damien and Kate appeared. Damien was looking very pale, either a rough night like us or he was in desperate need of blood. Not like us. Well ok, Hal was in need of blood. Steven was still about so was Hal going to Rook for some blood? Likely. Soon our gang was down to just myself and Su. Inside the “How’d you like those canines in your jugular” scene in episode five was being done. Myself and Su decided to leave because we had to be somewhere else that evening. Where that somewhere else was I couldn’t tell you, how we got there I could tell you even less. We were going to a local charity event. In a school hall about thirty miles north of Cardiff. Why?….

Jerry, the head of security had organised for Damien, Kate and Michael to attend for reasons I’m still not sure of, we can only assume the village is where Gerry lives. I had and still have no idea where the village is or what it was called so I made up a name. We were at Pontypantyfilth. It took a while to find the right place (understatement, just ask Su) and we were beginning to think this was one big wind up by the crew. It was pissing down, dark and we were lost. Eventually we did find it and Kath and her friend Monique were already inside. We collected the tickets (“Oh, you’re the Being Human people”) and were given a free drink on entry. There were tables with nibbles on and a choir played. And a country band. It was a little surreal but we saw this…

Which is the kind of thing we’d been hoping for. The first few auctions were things like ‘Mrs Maple will walk your dogs for a week” or “Two free cake decoration classes” and this went on for quite a while until it was time for the biggy, the reason we were here – a day on the set of Being Human. We knew that after Monday, the last two weeks of shooting would be inside the Honolulu Heights studio so this could be epic. In truth, I wasn’t expecting to bid because I thought more people would and the summer’s travelling had left me a little skint. However, nobody else but our table in there was a fan of the show and when the bidding was going on, they were looking at our table as Su raised her hand and all they were doing was attempting to put Su’s price up a little! It became apparent we were going to get it cheap and as soon as Su was getting worried about the price I said I’d pay half and we got it for £30 each. We were going to Honolulu!! We were positively giddy.

We could see Michael Socha and Kate Bracken hanging about outside and for a few minutes there was no sign of Damien. I think it’s fair too say that Su was concerned by the lack of Damo sighting but thankfully for the safety of all of us, he appeared and all was calm again! Jerry introduced them into the hall and there was applause and they sat at a table to await their public. It was all very surreal. Jerry came over to us to ask if we’d go up first so other people would then go. I approached them and the first thing I could think to say while pointing out the photos on their table was “ who are these rather good looking people?” Yes, you are right to *facepalm*. We had to pay a fiver for a photo and an autograph and while I’m not really bothered by autographs, if I’m paying money then I’m blimmin’ well having one. They all wrote lovely things to us and we had our photos taken by a very confused man. Thanks to the auction, what was supposed to be our last day of filming was now our penultimate. We knew the trinity would be filming on Cardiff’s main streets (apocalypse scenes, episode 6) just 24 hours later – typically right where we’d been based all week . Sadly none of us would be around for those epic moments bar Kath who is local. Off we went into the night, rather happy at the most productive of unproductive days and with a place for Pontypantyfilth forever in our hearts.

* It’s also worth noting that when we left the Glamorgan archives Jay the security guard was genuinley nice to us by shaking our hands and sincerely wishing us all the best. He was sooo going to miss us.