Finding The Aliens' Weakness
Location: Farnborough, Hampshire
Bodies present: Ian Lindsay, Mike Varty, Mark Stalker, Sue Element, David Randell, Henry Burrows

The students stare in horror at their cameraman and sound engineer

So far, enjoying a mild Autumn in Hampshire, filming had been confined to the kitchen and lounge of our mythical student house. But as soon as conditions turned arctic, the cast were required to venture outside the backdoor. Naturally.

Monday saw the gathering of the cast in the kitchen, around the alien-containing-lunchbox, with a full selection of the weird and wonderful to throw into the box, in the hope of eliminating one of the foil creatures. The cast arrived with their contributions and our weapons armoury included WD40, Earl Grey Tea, HP sauce and herbal laxative.

All that's left is smoke

A mystery ingredient finally did the deadly deed and the alien disappears in a puff of entrailed smoke. But what smoke? Dave seems to have given up the evil weed, and various combustions of cotton wool, kitchen towel and incense produced the measliest of little farts.

Then we remembered the few leftovers from Sue and Mike's fireworks party last month. Mike first braved the outdoors, and fearlessly lit a couple of "Mountain Fountains" on the back doorstep, holding the lunchbox over the eruptions to capture the smoke. The rest of the cast stood bravely in the kitchen watching the display through the door glass, before Mike burst in, relatively unscathed, with a boxful of the stuff. Worked a treat.

Scanner stares outside in horror

On Tuesday, we really had to grapple with sub-zero temperatures as Sue and Dave respectively had to sit on the driveway rustling the alien creature up against the kitchen window for what seemed like 3 hours, but was probably only a minute or two. The rest of the cast, again, looked on from the relative tropicana of the kitchen.

But none was spared as we proceeded to film Scanner attempting to attack the 2nd alien outside the backdoor, with Dave and Ian on sound, freezing themselves to the microphone stand, Mark on clapper-board and Sue and Dave on "alien control". Again 5 minutes out there seemed like hours.

Thankfully we successfully captured enough footage to enable us to get to the pub by 10 O'clock for a bit of Christmas cheer. So we leave it for 1997, with the foil creature poised to make his second launch for Ray in the kitchen.

No more until the New Year. So, Happy Christmas to all out there. And remember, 1998 is the year.