Anchorboy (20 page)

O
VERALL, OUR FIRST FEW SHOWS
from Trafalgar Square were going well, which is why I was so surprised when Ken called me one afternoon before we were about to shoot our fourth show: “How would you feel about Dan coming over to London?”

I was shocked and delighted. TSN was never known for spending money on production if they didn’t have to, especially when it was clear the shows were working and there were no technical issues. Instead, Ken explained that he simply thought the show would be better if Dan were in London and not via satellite in a studio. I couldn’t have agreed more. As technically flawless as the shows were, there was a noticeable and understandable drop-off in energy when we would cut from a solo shot of me in Trafalgar Square with its many sirens back to the Scarborough studio, which was designed to cut out excess newsroom noise. Plus, I just think I’m better with a co-host. A little of me goes a long way.

Ken explained that Dan would be flying over tomorrow and would start co-hosting with me the next day. I immediately e-mailed
Dan and got his thoughts. He was obviously thrilled, as he had never been to Europe before. The catch was that Nicole Anderson, our production manager, would not be able to get Dan credentials for any Olympic events because that was a process you needed to apply for months in advance. I knew full well Dan wouldn’t care. Would he have loved to go to Olympic events? Absolutely. But given the choice between going to London for three weeks with no access to events and staying in Scarborough with access only to the Jack Astor’s restaurant across the street, Dan wisely agreed to the flight across the pond. He ended up spending all of his mornings in London shopping for gifts for his wife and daughters and buying shoes for himself. I think he bought a different pair of shoes every single day of the Games. He was like a young Imelda Marcos those two weeks.

All the broadcasters working for the Olympic Consortium were fortunate enough to be assigned drivers who took us from one corner of this massive city to another. In Vancouver, many of these drivers were volunteers who simply wanted to be a part of the Olympic festivities. All well and good, except some of them had a better grasp of the Vancouver streets than others. In London, they opted for a simpler and more effective method of transporting broadcasters around: retired volunteer police officers. Talk about a group of guys who knew the city streets and the best way to get around them. We were lucky enough to be assigned a retired officer named Ian Taylor. Ian ended up being one of my favourite people of the entire trip. Every time we would hop into his car to be driven from the hotel
to the Olympic Park in the East End of London, we would learn something new about Britain, the Royal Family, and the English people in general. I found him fascinating and loved hearing his stories about the Thatcher years, the Blair years, and how things had changed now with David Cameron at the helm. He was a true English gentleman, and he was also unafraid of taking the piss out of us at all times. As Ian liked to say, “I’m a bloody pensioner! I couldn’t give a fuck about you lot!”

Nicole sent Ian to pick up Dan at Heathrow Airport and had him wear one of the T-shirts with a giant picture of Dan’s face on it. That was the first thing Dan saw when he went to collect his luggage, and of course he was delighted. He started hosting with me from Trafalgar Square right away, and the shows were instantly more fun.

Trafalgar Square was a dream location to broadcast from for several reasons. It was completely central, with plenty of people milling about during the day, so we could complete our daily rendition of “God Save the Queen” with a large group of English folk. It was TSN VP Ken Volden’s idea to end each show with the national anthem of the host country. He had apparently seen it done by an anchor team during the Sydney Olympics in Australia. What he didn’t mention was that the anchor team he was referring to was probably out of the business by this point, or in jail.

There was only one problem with Trafalgar Square: It essentially closed down at night. We were under the impression it would be more like Vancouver, where Robson Square was packed until midnight or later every evening during the Winter Games. But Trafalgar Square didn’t even have big screens showing Olympic events, and by around 10:00 p.m. local time, the square started to thin out so that all we were left with as a background audience were a
lot
of drunks, a few families out too late, and a smattering of couples and recent hookups unashamed about some serious PDA. I have never
been to a city where the citizens were so willing to drunkenly make out next to a fountain, the cops standing by watching with a look of serious disinterest on their faces.

Dan and I thought maybe we’d be able to get the crowd involved in highlights and “bits” in much the same way we do every year on the Kraft Tour. When Ken Volden told us he wanted to end every show with “God Save the Queen,” I imagined a scene right out of Glastonbury, with a huge crowd belting out the words and trying to top each other every night. But since the crowd averaged about seven people a night, that wasn’t going to be possible.

Instead, we would venture out with camera guy Dean during the day. We could have just filmed the segment in Trafalgar Square every day, which was packed during daylight hours, but we did our best to make an effort to switch things up as much as possible: We gathered a crowd exiting the beach volleyball venue, and we corralled huge groups of Olympic Park attendees. For one show we gathered a small group of Olympic volunteers watching Canada’s women’s gymnastics team compete at the O2 Arena. Then one day we simply forgot to do it. We had started to write the show, and suddenly I jumped up and screamed, “We forgot to do ‘God Save the Queen’!”

“I guess we just don’t have it for tonight’s show, then,” said Dean, who had already set up his camera and lights to film our show and wasn’t pleased at the idea of tearing everything down and having to put it back up again.

“We can do this. Dan, let’s go!” We were on a mission: round up as many Brits as we possibly could among the stragglers, drunks, and general ne’er-do-wells that filled the square. It was still relatively early, so we still had a chance to make the segment look good. But there was one major impediment …

The Mexicans.

Mexico ended up having a pretty successful Olympics. Their
always competitive men’s soccer team upset Brazil for the gold medal, resulting in easily the loudest and craziest crowd behind us in Trafalgar Square. We had also seen smaller but still boisterous groups of Mexicans in the square before that men’s soccer final, and tonight was no different. Turns out Mexico was becoming a nation of divers, and that particular evening one of their divers had captured a bronze. A crowd of about a hundred Mexicans and Mexican-Britons had gathered to celebrate, and they brought libations. We loved to hang over our scaffolding and listen to them sing celebratory songs until they eventually got tired or too drunk and went home. Tonight, however, we would be getting to know them more intimately.

Me, Dan, and our English broadcast intern Charlotte made our way into the square to try to round up English people to sing and get this whole exercise over with as quickly as possible. We were approaching people at the worst possible time, as everyone was on their way to dinner or had just spent the entire day in the square. No one was interested in sticking around to sing. We finally rounded up a nice young English family and two English women around thirty years old who were dressed like Olympic torches, complete with Union Jack–coloured flames shooting out from their foreheads. But that’s all we had, and suddenly we were desperate. Maybe that’s why we didn’t object when the Mexican fans spotted us, asked us what we were doing, and promptly plunked themselves right in front of our camera to join in the festivities.

This would ordinarily have been wonderful, but there was one key issue: Almost none of them spoke English. At least they pretended not to, so it was tricky trying to explain exactly what was going on, much less get them to co-operate. Two of the younger females in their group became their de facto spokespeople by virtue of their understanding of the Queen’s language; but the rest of the group, fuelled by their country’s Olympic victory and a large quantity
of what appeared to be decent tequila, were not in the mood to be corralled for a television segment. They were not in the mood to learn the words to the Queen’s anthem either. It was up to me, the young English family, the two English girls, and Dan to drown them out. There was simply no stopping it, and so we rolled tape and hoped for the best.

When it was all over, the look of disgust on our camera guy’s face was something I will never forget. Dean was a man used to carefully organized and constructed television shots that were lit and arranged beautifully and carefully. Instead, he got what looked like the mosh pit at Lollapalooza 1993. Mexicans jostling with each other. The English family just trying to protect their kids from getting tequila poured on their heads. The two English girls rejecting the advances of drunken louts and clearly regretting having run into us at all. The entire thing was a debacle, but I thought it really evoked the Olympic spirit of nations coming together for one common goal. Our retired English police officer, Ian, described the entire scene by using his favourite new North American slang term that we had taught him the day before:

“It was a
clusterfuck
.”

O
UR PRODUCTION MANAGER
, Nicole Anderson, had found a wonderful costume shop in London and had started to source out some great outfits. She ended up going with two classics: an old-time “London bobby” police officer and a pretty authentic Sherlock Holmes outfit. There was no rhyme nor reason to choosing either of these costumes for use on our show. We were simply trying to get the most English stuff into the show as possible.

First, we decided to use the London bobby costume. It was so simple. I dressed up in the full gear and ended up finding a bobby officer helmet at a corner store. Plastic, cheap, perfect. Carol, our English makeup artist, kindly provided me with some moustache glue and I applied a pretty thick fake duster under my nose. Normally, I needed only a month to grow a beautiful soup strainer, but we didn’t have that kind of time right now—the fake one would have to do. Unfortunately, I tend to sweat right above my upper lip, and the ’stache kept falling off my face and onto the ground. No matter.

Dean set up his camera in Trafalgar Square in the middle of the day when tons of people were wandering around and lining up to get into the National Gallery. Real police officers were everywhere. I wandered up to them in my outfit and proceeded to make small talk. Dean had outfitted me with a small microphone that picked up every word of our conversation. The real cops were on to me quickly, but they played along nicely. I spent the rest of the shoot wandering around the square and pretending to help tourists. I even ran into a pair of Buddhist monks. The entire shoot was completed without incident and proved to be a big hit.

Then there was Sherlock Holmes.

The idea was to put on the Holmes outfit, hop into the car with Ian, and have him drive us to Sherlock Holmes’s address: 221B Baker Street. It was about a fifteen-minute drive from Trafalgar Square in central London with all the traffic. We hoped to simply get some shots of me wandering around Sherlock’s address, and that was honestly about it. As I said, none of these shoots were elaborately planned. We hoped to get in and out of there without much trouble. Instead, the exact opposite happened.

When we pulled up to 221B Baker Street, we noticed that someone had had the foresight to build a Sherlock Holmes Museum there. Standing right at the doorway of the famous address was a tall chap like myself dressed in full Sherlock Holmes gear. Though we may have been biased, Dean, Ian, and I all agreed that my rented Sherlock costume was actually better than the one the official museum Holmes was sporting. After we cased the joint for a few minutes from our car, the museum Sherlock wandered inside, likely to relieve himself after a busy morning spent taking pictures with tourists.

We quickly sprang into action: Dean set the camera up right in front of the doorway of 221B and I stood in front of it with my plastic pipe, making very serious and pensive detective faces. That should
have been it. We should have peeled out of there and been done with the place. But suddenly I was the centre of attention. All of the tourists standing around waiting to get pictures with Sherlock Holmes now thought I was the Holmes hired by the museum. Suddenly, I had a lineup of people standing by with their iPhones and cameras wanting to get a picture with Sherlock. I gamely played along, and Dean continued to roll camera on the entire thing. Surely we could use this material. I might have just stayed there all day until I felt a hand in the small of my back nudge me forward, and a condescending voice behind me said, “I’m going to need you to get off these steps, please.”

It was the other Sherlock.

He had a smug and unimpressed look on his face. There was anger in his voice. I had stepped into his tiny spotlight, taken away the one thing in his life that gave him joy, and he was not happy about it. I conceded the step to him and directed the tourists to start taking pictures with the “real” Sherlock. We had pretty much all the material we needed for the shoot anyway. Dean continued to get shots of the exterior of the building for cover purposes. I wandered back on the sidewalk, but the tourists continued to flock toward me and away from the “real” Sherlock. It was beyond my control, and I wasn’t about to stop taking pictures with people when they had come all this way to get pictures with Sherlock Holmes. The “real” Sherlock was clearly unimpressed that he was no longer the star of the show. All this was delighting me to no end.

Once Dean had indicated he was finished shooting, he gathered his camera and I grabbed his tripod. I just realized that sounds dirty. I did not grab his penis. I grabbed the actual tripod that he used to host his camera in one place. We started to make our way back to Ian’s car, walking past the “real” Sherlock one last time. I simply could not resist.

As I walked by, he looked up at me, and I flipped him the bird.
Gave him the finger. Whatever you want to call it. I really felt he deserved it after the way he had treated us that day, but I wanted to be subtle, didn’t want to cause a scene. I thought I had made my point and life would continue on.

But the “real” Sherlock had other ideas.

We walked across the street, and Dean took some more shots of me wandering around in my Holmes outfit. We then declared ourselves done and set the camera up next to the car so we could look into Dean’s camera monitor; he played back the footage he had just shot so we could make sure we had everything we needed before we took off back to our little temporary office in Trafalgar Square. Dean and I were both peering into the monitor and commenting on the stuff he had shot. I looked up for some reason and saw a man near the Holmes museum about thirty feet away. He pointed in my direction and started walking toward me with purpose. I looked behind me. Was he pointing at me? He looked to be a normal guy in a white shirt and black trousers. All of a sudden he was right in front of me.

“Flip me the bird, will you!” he screamed while reaching back and trying to deliver what I can only describe as a “slap” toward my face. Imagine during Shakespearean times when English gentlemen would duel each other by slapping each other with their gloves. That was pretty much what this guy tried with me, except without gloves. I managed to lean back in a nonchalant way and avoid the blow. He had removed his costume and was now ready to fight me over the fact that I had given him the finger. The finger! In North America, motorists give each other the finger every 1.3 seconds. It’s practically like waving at this point. When I finally realized what was going on, I started laughing.

Dean and Ian quickly stepped in between us, to his objection: “Standing behind your tough friends, eh?” he screamed. I was disappointed. Why hadn’t he just left his Holmes outfit on? Imagine
how much funnier this would be to onlookers if two guys dressed as Sherlock Holmes started fighting in front of the Sherlock Holmes museum? It would have been a true Borat moment. Amazingly, two London police officers were standing nearby watching the entire thing, and they grabbed the “real” Holmes and dragged him away to calm him down. The three of us looked at each other in disbelief. Had that really just happened? Had I just been “slap-attacked” by a man who was likely a frustrated actor trying to make ends meet by working at a cheesy museum? Indeed I had. The Olympics!

That night we encountered no trouble whatsoever at legendary jazz club Ronnie Scott’s, a Soho institution we frequented throughout the Games, listening to jazz and quietly talking about that evening’s show while drinking double gin and tonics. We managed to squeeze into a booth and proceeded to get drunk. Young British couples were snogging in booths near us. Local players would finish the night, and I was always amazed how young they were and that young people were still so passionate about jazz. It made me feel good.

After the bar closed, we all hopped into rickshaws and raced back to our hotel, where we closed down the lobby bar. We ordered chicken tikka masala and several rounds of
double
double gin and tonics and a few shots of tequila and then charged the entire bill to TSN reporter Brent Wallace’s room because Brent never came out with us. The night continued until there were only three of us sitting in the lobby, absolutely wasted, when CTV lighting director Slobodan Marin walked in through the front door at 5:00 a.m. after his overnight shift of Brian Williams’s CTV
Olympic Prime Time
show.

“Do you want to come with me to see the Dream Team play tomorrow?” he asked.

Without thinking I said yes immediately. Of course I wanted to see Kobe, LeBron, and the best U.S. basketball players beat up on some unfortunate Eastern European country. I crashed and grabbed a few hours of sleep, and then I woke up and met Slobo in the lobby. He looked absolutely shocked to see me.

“Oh! You’re a tough guy!” he said. I think he was being serious.

“I’m not feeling great, but I’m a man of my word!” I lied. I honestly had no idea how I’d managed to wake up and make it down to the lobby at this hour.

“You know what my dad used to say when I was growing up in Serbia and I started going out to bars with my friends and staying up all night?”

I waited intently …

“If you’re going to be a man at night, you’d better be a man in the morning.”