Sunday 14th June
I had travelled down to London Heathrow T5 yesterday and stayed over night in the T5 hotel, The Sofitel.
It was a very nice hotel but as usual I only had a few hours in the room because I was meeting the rest of the crew at 4:30 in the morning.
We all congregated and got checked in for the flight after making sure that the equipment we were taking was all evenly distributed between us all to prevent paying any excess baggage fees.
When we got off the flight we had a bus journey to get to Piraeus to board the ship. Well at least some of us did. Mr Motivator and Deanne the presenters had a taxi to take them to the port.
Before we got on board the ship I had to do a little bit of shooting of the girls, Sharon, Rachel and Julia getting on the Ruby Princess.
The ship is a pretty impressive thing. Over 20 floors or decks of very nice cabins, several reassurance, numerous swimming pools, a putting green and a massive fully equipped gym, not to mention a spa and casino.
We managed to have time to grab a quick bite to eat before Simon the Sound Recordist and I had to do a some work.
We filmed some little teases with Mr Motivator, Deanne and the girls. The sun was shining and the views over towards Athens fantastic.
Jemma the Producer was looking after this little item and some workout stuff we did later. For some reason I got it in to my head that her name was Jessica.
Is that not just one of the worst things when somebody gets your name wrong?
Sorry Jemma.
Leaving port we had the privilege of being on the bridge when the Pilot and the Captain eased the massive beast out through of the harbour.
The gap between the sea walls looked like a tight squeeze. A bit like a tourist bus manoeuvring the old streets of York.
It was all done very calmly and quietly. There was no sense of drama as the leviathan cleared the harbour in to the sea.
Sound Recordist Simon as opposed to Director Simon was in the navy for a number of years and had been on many ship’s bridges. he said that it was the most impressive bridge he’d ever seen.
Like the rest of the ship it certainly was big.
Then we went out on to the deck above the bridge where there was a bit of an impromptu workout.
Whilst we were having all that fun Ian the satellite engineer had been reacquainted with his flyaway satellite dish. It had been freighted out to the ship a few days ago.
He had it all built and was ready to go. The only thing was that the ship was not going on a straight line yet. It was having to weave very imperceptibly to avoid traffic ahead that could be seen on the ship’s radar.
The ship needs to be following the same heading for the satellite dish to stay locked on to the satellite way up there in space.
On of the officers told us that it would not be long until it settled down to a steady course for at least a little while.
Sure enough it did. Ian got the dish locked on to the bird and we were able to feed some of our material back to GMTV in London.
By this time it was already time for us to go and get something to eat and film the girls having their first dinner on board the ship.
It would not be easy for them to restrict any food intake because not only is the food very good it is also available 24 hours a day.
They were also told that they would not be able to have anything else to drink other than water.
It’s a pity that the ship did not know that, because as a sign of hospitality a bottle of champagne had been left in each of their rooms.
One of the little tinkers was able to scoff it before the Producers found out!
After dinner we all went to the room that we had been assigned as our production office.
Nigel the Sound Supervisor fitted the girls and Deanne with their personal Britney style head set microphones.
The Producers talked to the office in London about what would be in the programme in the morning.
Simon the Director took on the role of editor and cut the material I had shot during the day.
It was well past 11pm local time before we finally finished work for the day.
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