O Flip Gold

The Twang are my new favourite band. I was in Montenegro with them over the weekend shooting the video for their forthcoming single 'Barney Rubble'. They are proper brum, lovely and funny as hell. Pretty much everything they talk about makes you laugh. A lot. And they have their own peculiar cant; for instance they say 'cloth' instead of garms. "I've always liked my cloth". Shit like that. They also smoke more than my poor grandfather who died of emphysema, his skin worn so thin from the steroid treatment that it would break on the slightest contact like parchment. He smoked bare tabs. The Twang should be sponsored by cigarettes.

We landed in Podgorcia at 9.30 pm, after a full day of travelling that included a 3 hour stop over in Belgrade, and were then confronted by a four hour drive, over mountainous, coiling, single lane roads, to the coastal town of Kotor where we were shooting. A girl from the fixing company with a hairy mole above her top lip met us at the airport and escorted us to an old Yugoslav tour bus parked outside the diminutive terminal. Oh god. The rear shock absorbers were defective, there were no seat belts and the driver was slightly simple. (We later discovered that he was actually a lunatic.) Egor only had one CD on board comprising mainly Serbian 'hits', but also a couple of English language songs, including Charles and Eddie's 'Would I Lie To You' and Jon Secada's 'Just Another Day'. Suicide alley. It came as something of a relief when the production lady very kindly asked, "Are you want some beer?" I kept looking at her mole by mistake. Hello moley. Yes we do want some beer.

After a few cans the banter began in earnest, each band member seamlessly exchanging non sequitur memories and observations, until it felt more like listening to one conjoined voice as opposed to five.

"We played 'how drunk can you get in an hour' at Amsterdam airport. The answer's very. My mate Charlie used to stroke bees. Nutter. And he used to collect bird's feet. See that 'Eagle' sandwich on the menu kid? Fook off. And that wrapper on them biscuits said 'Noblice' man. Raggo man. This is fookin Jon Secada. It is. He was well big man. He used to be Gloria Estefan's backing singer. You know she only had one eye. No. I nearly called her a tripod for a minute then. Fookin hell. I'm reading Shane MacGowan's autobiography. His dad never used to have a bath. When they washed the dirt off him, he died. Kimbo's a ledge man. You seen that Mongolian wrestling? I fookin love Ray Mears. He must have turded it when he saw that bear. Who wants to get ragged by a fookin bear. Imagine looking at that pilled up."


The drive seemed interminable, but we eventually arrived at the hotel 'Splendido' and after a fitful night's sleep I awoke to see the extraordinary panorama of the Bay of Kotor - a fjord, which actually forms part of the Adriatic Sea and is surrounded by colossal, overhanging limestone cliffs. Mental.

Rather than describe what happened on the shoot I'll just let the I'd Prefer Not To TV exclusive 'making of' do the talking. This confirms that I'm the Beagle One of B-roll. Made of pure hi-jinx and beer vision, it includes absolutely no behind the scenes footage from the video, no interviews with the artist or director, no Z One 3 chip business (strictly Flip) and none of the band's music. Fuck yeah.

Imagine Looking At That Pilled UP from I'd Prefer Not To TV on Vimeo.