The call came through to my Banana Hot Line one lazy Thursday afternoon. It was Richard from Channel 4's Real Holiday show asking if we would do a twenty minute exposé on what TBR got up to during their World Wide Domination Initiatives. He wanted to send a film crew out with us to report on our Amazing Cheese exploits in the Northern Spain in the summer of '99.
I told him that we would be happy to oblige but only with following conditions:
1) The film crew they sent had to contain at least one blond Dutch fox.
2) The film crew must not slow us down on any trailing bashing we did.
3) That we had a 'look away' understanding with the cameraman/girl when we were doing something that would scare small children and/or end any relationships or jobs we might be involved in.
4) That we had the final cut.
5) That they did not film us when visiting the toilet or shoving grapes down Willsters pants.
6) That we could have the Banana Bunch theme tune played at the start of the show.
and finally
7) That the other two members of the film crew were also Dutch foxes who would answer to the names of Saskia and Folga or if possible Eyeball 1 and Eyeball 2.
Unreasonably Channel Four said that they could not accommodate us in all our demands. So that was the end of that! We blew them out.
The call came two months after I sent off this letter. So if you want to do something similar then the formula below appears to work. However be willing to loose your girlfreind/job/diginity and family once the show goes on air!
Domster
Base Banana
South Yorkshire.
England.
11th March 1999.
Dear Real Holiday Show,
my team mates and I are passionately interested in appearing in one of the shows of your next series.
Our holidays are a team event and have been since 96’ when the seven members of Team Banana Racing first started spending our summer vacations together riding mountain bikes in some of the most beautiful and spectacular parts of Europe.
The team consists of five good friends who originally met at school plus one young tear-away plus El Presidenté. I say young, as the team demographics are at the interesting side of our 20’s ie. we are all 29 bar the young tear-away and El Presidenté. However, judging from our previous exploits it is clear that ‘age is no indication of maturity’. Some interesting demographic facts (and maybe a little worrying) are that only one of us owns a house, all of us are ‘professionals’ and none of us are married, except maybe to our bikes.
Some of the guys wanted me to do the hard sell and write a ten page epic on what great idea it is to take us on, but the general consensus was that you will take us as you find us and I’m sure that’s exactly the way you want it. On saying that I wrote a four page epic and the photo bonus padded it out to six!
The only advert I do have is that our peers are always trying to tag along with us and that ‘people’ in general find our holidays ‘different’ and ‘interesting’, and more importantly they talk about us down the pub, even when, and especially when we’re not around.........Which is surely what good TV is all about!?
So, if we talk about our past holidays, will that give you some idea of what our holiday this summer may be like ? Well anyway, our holidays :
We started in 96’ with a two week holiday in the French Alps. This was a little special as we were doing the biking for Charity and had a little local and national press coverage plus some sponsorship. We called the event ‘Everest High’ as the deal was to climb the same height of Everest in five days. We did it, and raised one and half grand to boot. On the laddish side of things we managed to pretzel three cars, have a run in with the local night club security, go skinny dipping with Folga and Saskia (2 Dutch girls) and on the last evening Rogster managed to upset a lot of the campers by dancing around the camp fire dressed as Hitler singing ‘You ain’t nothing but a houndog’.
In 97’ things were a little more relaxed and we headed to the sunnier climbs of the Italian Alps near Europes largest Fresh water lake, Garda. The holiday started well with Will’ster as per usual shredding various parts of his anatomy in a top dirt eating crash. The riding was special with lots of Alpine meadows to frolic in like wildebeests and some very special boulder strewn mule tracks to fly down. I guess the grand finale of the holiday had to be the lake jumping in the town of Riva del Garda. On the last day we set up our amazing plank (a ramp) in the town square pointing it out towards the lake. The evening performance attracted a very sizable crowd and we were asked to move by the police when the ‘jumping trough flames finale’ almost got out of hand.
Mr Roger ‘Mellow’ Weller chose to look for a quieter, more predictable 98’ and we headed off to the less well known High Tatras mountains in Slovakia. Predictable ? Willster got called home after just one day for an urgent work assignment, the local ‘picturesque’ town was something of a hole, the High Tatras were in fact too high and unrideable. However, we found that the Low Tatras had some superb riding, the local hotel had the best disco within a 50km radius and everyone went there and without Will’ster we had the pick of the ladies! Maybe the most unexpected and incomprehensible part of the whole thing was that the local girls thought that we were ‘perfect boys’ We had credit cards, Ha !
Domster who is our Minister for Communication and Lies later had his ‘Guide to Slovakia’ published in a UK Cycling Magazine, so all in all it turned out very well for our egos. Please don’t think that we are in anyway a professional bunch of bananas. Sometimes we try to do things as if we were which often results in embarrassing pant tearing action and a sheepish hobbling walk back to the bike.
The summer of 99’ will take us on an autoroute south. We know that we are going to spend 10 days in the Pico’s Europa which is a range of mountains on the northern coast of Spain staying in an old tower which once belonged to a one handed bango player. No kidding. The four days preceding that we will be staying in an as yet undecided part of Europe, may be the Pyrenees, maybe the Massif Central.
I hope that between us we have a least a modicum of brains so we should be pretty effective at shooting ‘good television’. We are a dab hand with the lovely 35mm format and have dabbled once in evils of MiniDV. We know that film is the cheapest part of the camera and are willing to shoot the action stuff several times over to get the pant-tastic footage we deserve. We also would love to have some pencil cams to do some ‘this is what its like to fly down a mule track at 40mph’ shots. If not, we have invented a ‘bonce cam’ that can do the job just as well with a JVC MiniDV camera, errr we think.
Because we know that know good TV is not a back drop of beautiful mountain scenery with six lads sweating, screaming, flying and crashing on bikes (although its sounds pretty good to me) we are happy to concede that the most ‘fulfilling’ part of the holiday is spending quality time with your friends. As you can imagine, when you spend two weeks riding and living together a team of sweaty fig eating mountain bikers the team biorhythms go through several ups and downs.
The contrast of personalities sometimes results in exciting clashes of egos. As yet we have never managed to capture this on 35mm film because despite what they say pictures don’t tell a thousand words. I for one would have been absolutely delighted to capture the incident on tape last year when Rog’ster in a state of some stress turned around and told me to "Shut the F*** up C*** Sucker" and the entire team went quiet with shock because Rog’ster is normally such a mellow bloke.
In summarry, we would bring back good stuff. The video would be the holiday and definately not the other way round, if you see what I mean. We all agreed that if anyone started planning shots a day ahead or if someone started acting the goose when the red light was on then the camera was going to the bottom of a deep dark cupboard.
If you took us on, in a big big coconut dwarfing nutshell you would get the following ingredients plus some others, which are the exciting ones which you can’t see coming:
The departure - We try to get five bikes, 3 blokes and 2 weeks of gear into a Toyota Celica. That is Moto 1 or Car A which sets off from London on its pan-European jaunt. Moto 2 or Car FF sets off from Clithero in the wild north and is the sherpa of the team carrying both the jumping ramp and the team fridge (full of beer) plus any stragglers. Pace notes, Iced coffee drinks, bad jokes and dodgy foreign over taking maneuvers are packed in abundance for the voyage ahead.
The journey - in itself a spectacular! I don’t know if we would get prosecuted if you showed us screaming down the autoroute at 130mph in a overloaded Celica. Apart from stopping to pick Scott up from Paris we only pause for petrol and pissing.
The arrival - never in your life have you seen self catering accommodation have its deposit forfieted in such a short space of time. First thing is to take all the downstairs doors off and then we begin to unload ; toothbrushes , VCR, TV, Laptop with Internet link via GSM, the fridge, Nintendo, Minidisc player, 60 packets of fig rolls and last but not least our amazing disco lights.
The first day - We never get rolling before midday as there is always lots of last minute fettling to be done and this usually sets the standard for rest of the holiday. Always last minute bloody fettling to be done. On the first day Will’ster usually disappears under a cloud of rocks and dust on some Alpine downhill as his first day enthusiasm drives him beyond the envelope of his ability and pants. The evening ritual of shower, food and find a bar commences.
The baggy day - The day when everything is spiritual hugs and lovelyness. Absolutely no lycra or aggression allowed on this day as we all wear Hawaiian shirts, baggy shorts and flowers in our helmets. We listen to the Beach Boys Pet Sounds or Belle and Sebastian on the drive out (music plays a big part in TBR hols) and spend the day complimenting each other on our riding abilities, choice of shirt, comparing notes on flower arranging, dreaming up herbal remedies for bad chi and generally trying to instill a feeling of brotherhood and togetherness.
The ‘normal’ day - Always breakfasts of cereals, milk, orange juice, energy bars and for Carster pilchard sandwiches with yesterdays cold pasta stirred in to mayonnaise and fig biscuits. A little stroking and kissing of the bikes and then a drive out to the ride start and start to ride. Ride - because after all, that’s what its all about. The evening ritual of shower, food and find a bar continues.
The TBR day - Like a normal day but we are all obliged to wear our team strip and sound off our TBR numbers and whenever possible ride in RAF formation , wheel to wheel and as close as we dare, which looks kind of hip - like a big swarm of buzzing bumble bees on bikes.
The Rest day - A day when you do as you please but at least try and do it together cos its more pleasant that way. Some of us wash our socks, some of us find a quiet lake to meditate by, throw a frisbee, hide a bike up a tree, chop some logs, spin the car off the road, buy some herring livers for breakfast, write some postcards ‘Dear Girlfriend, the herring livers are lovely.....’ and some of us even get restless and go for a sneaky little ride in the afternoon - Dom’ster!
The Big Night Out - Usually follows the rest day. We usually start with a light meal with a few beers, and then a bar and many beers and then the local nightclub which is always an adventure. The stories are varied and many but several general rules apply; we always pull, we always stand out from the locals like sore thumbs (which may be why the girls are attracted to us, but why they would find six dehydrated guys bouncing up and down in the middle of the dance floor attractive beats me), we always ask the DJ for Pulps Common People which invariable they never have and finally we always wake up in a gutter or in park or on climbing frame or in a strange tent but never in our own beds and always with our underpants in our pockets.
The ‘Big Day’ - usually at the end of the holiday we plan a big stonking long ride. Towards the end of this ride we often find ourselves watching with dawning horror a beautiful Alpine sun set, for we are still half way up the mountain and the night will soon be upon us. We always try and celebrate such rides by showers in carefully carried bottles of beer at the principal summit. That is always the high point, both geographically and spiritually. The low point usually arrives several hours after, as we stumble around lost in the dark with our glycogen deprived cerebral cortex’s and bleeding knees trying to find a tiny puncture in our very last inner tube.
So back to Espania 99’ Well whatever the outcome there is always a sense of expectation and adventure as we never know exactly what we have let ourselves in for this time around. Is the apartment going to have a good shower? Will the local trails be dusty, rocky, slimy, narrow, wide, easy? Will the local girls be dusty, rocky, slimy, narrow, wide, easy? What’s the name of the local beer? What’s the name of the local bar man? Will he give us free chips? Will I have wasted my two weeks and four hundred pounds? Will I crash and die? Is there a God? If so does he know why inner-tube air always smells of tuna? Will there be a lake to jump into? Will there be a donkey in the trail? Will the holiday live up to our massive expectations and desires?
Usually, through a process of team affirmations and trying bloody hard it always has done. Like they say - having fun is hard work.
Please let us on your holiday show, I am sure, and we give you our banana-tastic guarantee that you will not be disappointed.
Ride Fast, Ride Fruity, We await your reply with banana baited breath.
Domster
aka. Dominic Perry, Minister for Communication and Lies.
PS. Check out www.team-banana-racing.com for a rather unprofessional and not updated look at or qualifications.