I am Goldfinger!

On the surface of it it seemed such an easy task.

Turn up at Yaa, get a body cast made and go home. There. Nothing too hard about that right?

Wrong.

Things seemed to be going pretty well on Wednesday. I got out of school in Rochester early as planned and made my way up to Roehampton to pick up a form, then headed to Shepherds Bush. From there the plan was to get a tube to Yaa, but as the tube station had been knocked down for refurbishment this proved somewhat more difficult than expected. I ended up getting a rail replacement bus that landed me in White City at the BBC Television Centre, where Coldplay had just started playing a free open air gig.



I can't stand Coldplay but I love a bargain, and on balance, I'd say that a free Coldplay gig is marginally better than a slap in the face so I stayed.

Now the technical team had mentioned that this wasn't going to be easy. I had to make sure I had lots of water and had eaten beforehand. So I duly went and got a pint and a burger and set off to the Yaa.

I mean come ON, how hard could it be?! Right...?



(Famous last words)

The backpack had to be made to hold the costume attachments in place and the wrong size backpacks had caused me huge damage in the past

The aftermath

The process involves wrapping you in clingfilm around the torso, then applying plaster of Paris to the shape of the body.



Laughing it off at first, I didn't have any idea that 5 minutes into the procedure I would black out. The world started wobbling pretty violently and next thing I knew I was being scraped off the floor babbling "Just prop me up I'll be fine"



My ass! I was absolutely fucked.

It turns out that, like in the James Bond film Goldfinger, when wrapped in cling film your skin can't breath adequately and you end up having real difficulty getting enough air and cooling down too.



I had passed out from asphyxiation and overheating.



Totally doolally, I was taken outside for some air, and I had the worst pins and needles in my arms, and couldn't stand up at all. Weird feeling.

Finally they put me to bed and I was shaking like a leaf and freezing cold, and an hour or more later I finally stopped trembling and fell asleep for the night there, only to wake up at 6am and trek for 2 and a half hours to work in Rochester from North London.



And all this in the name of entertaining the public for carnival! We don't just throw this together you know!

Dates for your diary:

16-17 Aug 2008: Notting Hill Carnival Splash, Alexander Palace

24-25 Aug 2008: Notting Hill Carnival, Notting Hill and surrounding streets
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