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Old 26th December 2020, 09:10
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Mister Towed Mister Towed is offline
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I hope everyone had the best Christmas possible given the circumstances, I certainly did so now I need to go on a serious diet!

Nothing much to update on the Speedster yet, but I'm aiming to get on with it in a day or so. I did have an interesting day out in Iris the Midget last Friday, though.

As you may be aware, after selling my Spyder I bought Iris as a running car to use on sunny days while I finished the Speedster. That quickly turned into a total mechanical refurbishment of the suspension, overdrive unit, cylinder head, new clutch, new brakes, full respray, etc., etc., which swallowed about a year of kit building time.

Okay, with hindsight I should have just got on and finished my Speedster instead, but at least Iris now looks like this -



Which rather unexpectedly led to me being asked if Iris would like to appear on television.

So, after a wash and polish (and the inevitable strip down and rebuild of one of the carburettors due to a jet jamming open when the choke was released) it was off to a secret film set hidden away in deepest, darkest Norfolk -



Setting up took about two hours - the camera track had to be dismantled to get the car into the 'garage' (mostly made of polystyrene and ply board) then reassembled and levelled, and the set had to be dressed to look like a domestic garage scene -





Which was followed by lots of lighting adjustments, camera checks and test shoots -



Before I went on set to play second fiddle to Iris and do some acting -



The young media savvy production team just loved Iris and apparently I'm a natural in front of the camera, perfecting the art of zipping up my overalls and pretending to remove a hubcap in only about 200 takes.

The shoot was for the sponsor of a new series of The Car Years, which is due to go out on ITV in February. They have also shot a selection of other vehicles - a modern, high performance SUV, a 70's Escort rally car, a Rat Look Bay window bus, etc., and the film will be edited to look like the camera is scanning a row of terraced garages with owners attending to the various needs of their pride and joys.

If they use the footage (I hope they will), Iris and I will be on screen for about three seconds at each end of the adverts. I guess if they repeat it enough times we'll get our fifteen minutes of fame.

All in all it was a very interesting day out and the fact that Iris was considered worthy to appear on TV just shows what you can achieve with a bit of mechanical ability, a domestic garage and a £150 spray gun at home.

Last edited by Mister Towed; 26th December 2020 at 09:12..
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