Beware of the croc

I recently spent a fun afternoon wearing my actor’s hat, filming a commercial here in Bristol. I was playing an “older gent” sitting in a retirement home in Fishponds (a very nice one, by the way; I’m putting my name down) and extolling to my “son” the virtues of a new auction website, through which I had just bought the large flat-screen TV on the wall behind me.

Suddenly I am attacked by a giant crocodile. That was to be expected, of course, as the auction site is called crocbids. I’m knocked backwards out of my chair and I end up underneath the crocodile, arms and legs waving feebly.

Of course I wasn’t really knocked out of my chair, because for the first time in my life I had a body-double. They could in fact have put a disclaimer on the advert: “no elderly gents, or actors playing elderly gents, were harmed during the making of this advert.”

The finished product will be shown on Sky channels soon but I’m not sure when. If you’d like to see the commercial, though, it’s called “Crocbids Vs Retirement” and it’s on YouTube, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYsNW9QRiSY

For the record, and for my thanks, I was cast by Kate Marshall of Room3 Agency and the production company was Lightworx.