So, this afternoon I toddled off to be a television commercial super-star extra.

I responded to a call for extras on Wednesday from an email list I’m on, around 5 hours after the email had been sent out. They wanted 50 people between 20&40 and there are bazillions of people on the mailing list, so realistically it was unlikely they would want me, but I thought I’d have a bash anyway, because I’ve always loved the adverts and thought it looked totally fun (and I’m always up for making a dick of myself).

You can see previous commercials here (you need to click on the television on the right when you get to the main page).

And I received a call on Saturday saying they did want me – Woo! Even though they had no idea what I look like (which I said to dfkan was odd, because given the adverts in this series I do not at all fit into the mould of person they want/use). They asked would I mind staying for the day’s whole shoot and I was totally cool with staying, because it would provide excellent anecdotage / bloggage.

I rocked up to the location this afternoon and milled about with the other extras (about 20 of us). There was a fair mix of people, from the very normal, to the rather good looking indeed and your more “character” types.

After milling about for quite some time, trying to look nonchalant, we were eventually whisked off to wardrobe where we donned white bonds t-shirts, white very short shorts (the smallest shorts hung around my hips) and white tennis shoes, lab coats and protective goggles. My hair was de-frizzed by the hairdresser (it was rains-ish today & my hair was suffering badly), I signed a release and was onto the set, where we were given clip-boards and stood in a group behind sciency style desks. And we did what we had to do a couple of times (which was essentially look dead-pan at the camera) and that was it.

After they’d had a look at us, the director decided that he no longer required the 3 people (including me) who they had asked to stay for the whole thing, they preferred other people in the group (who, in all fairness, were really more suited to it anyway).

And then I came home.

Which was good actually, because if I didn’t come home I would still be there for at least another 2 hours and I would not have been able to help reorganise the garage so The New Car (which gets picked up tomorrow!) can fit in it.

And that was my brush with super-stardom. It was somewhat less super-exciting than I thought it would be.