Interview for Canal Sur TV (Spain)

It’s a hard life being on telly. The other week I had a very small taste of it when a crew of three came to film me down on the beach in Conil, for some odd reason I have yet to figure out. If it was for money, I didn’t get any.

To clear up a few points. In this short film you can see me walking through the alleys and backstreets of Conil like I’m made out of cardboard. I’m not actually made out of cardboard.

Secondly, we arrive on the beach and I start speaking Spanish like clockwork. I don’t mean clockwork like good, I mean clockwork like broken clockwork Spanish. Due to this failing, there seems to have been several misunderstandings, regarding my bio, in the voiceover. All of which could have easily been solved if the crew had thought to oil me with a few drops of single malt beforehand.

To put them right, I attended Loughborough College of Art & Design to study graphics, not the university. It was my grandfather that came from Hammerfest in the north of Norway, not my mother. Far from working in graphics for most of my life, I spent much more of it dealing in old rugs – not old drugs, rugs – and tribal kilims around the Portobello Road in London.

Just one more thing. Though I appear to be walking uphill to the beach in the film, in common with other coastal towns and villages, the beach is not at the top of a hill in Conil. The effect is a film-making device that dictates people look better walking up hills than down them. In fact, I had to walk down the hill to walk back up it for a couple of shots. All without one sip of the tipple that keeps me going.

The beach is actually at sea level, more or less, depending on the time of day, and the tides. At some hours, a good deal of it is below sea level. I just thought I ought to clear that up to save having to answer any queries on that point.

And another thing, while I’m at it. Despite the impression conveyed on the title shot, people can’t just pick and choose how they spell my name. It’s Bryan with a ‘y’, got it? Not a ‘y’ or an ‘i’. I’m not bloody Shakespear, spelling it this way and that, just as the fancy takes me. That goes for all those people who can’t stop adding an ‘s’ to the end of Hemming as well. Imagine how much ink gets wasted doing that all the time.

Having said all that, I suppose most of the people reading this don’t speak Spanish, so maybe I’ve given too much away.

Copyright © 2011 Bryan Hemming               Conil

Advertisement