On the road with Foiled
Location: South Manchester
Bodies present: Ian Lindsay, David Randell, Sue Element, Howell Parry, Geraint Pritchard, Mike Varty, Mark Stalker, Henry Burrows

At 3pm, Henry, Sue, Dave, Mark, Ian and Mike arrived at my house in Manchester. A few minutes later I turned up with Geraint Pritchard, star of the infamous Diet Coke advert which has stunned audiences around the world apparently.

Driving out of Manchester

We took two cars, one containing Laura, Jimmy and Foil Man (in the back) and the rest of us somehow squeezed into the other car (the "camera car"). We drove to Fallowfield (a very studenty area of Manchester), which is where the Foiled students live in the film. Henry, sat in the passenger seat of the car, leaned out of the window to film the students in their car behind us. By giving hand signals, Henry was able to "direct" the other car so that it would come up alongside us and then overtake us, so we could film it from all angles.

It was remarked at one point that we could have done with some means of communication between the two cars, like two mobile phones, but we just had to make do with hand signals. Occasionally, the traffic got quite busy and the students would be a few cars behind us. These driving scenes weren't as straightforward as we first thought... especially on a busy Saturday afternoon in Manchester.

We drove around various major roads in Fallowfield, then went to Princess Road, a major dual carriageway which eventually leads to the M56 motorway and North Wales (where the students are heading to in the film). For a while, Henry decided that he wanted us to travel alongside the students' car, so that he could film them close-up as they travelled along. This got controversial at times when we were on 2-lane roads, as we were preventing any cars from overtaking, and also the drivers of our two cars were paying lots of attention to their acting and the other car's position, and not full attention to traffic signals etc! We were worried that perhaps the police would see us and pull us over for causing obstruction to other cars, but luckily we were OK.

Foil Man reaches for Laura

It was amazing watching the students' car. Basically, Jimmy and Laura were looking stressed and just wanting to get to North Wales as soon as possible to get the mushrooms to turn Foil Man back into Scanner, while in the back of the car, Foil Man would keep regaining consciousness and would attack Laura or Jimmy (at one point, he grabbed Jimmy's hand off the steering wheel, and Sue playing Laura didn't need to act - she genuinely felt concerned for her safety!). Each time Foil Man arose, Laura would use the stun gun to put him back to sleep for a few minutes. It looked so real!

I took lots of still photos of the other car, and Ian told us afterwards that he thought he'd been photographed by a speed camera! Eventually, after following the car around for perhaps an hour and a half, it was time for us to pull over, and for Henry to set up a tripod by the roadside to film the students' car driving past. We were stood outside lots of houses, and people were intrigued by what we were up to. People walking past gave us strange looks, and we noticed that all cars going past were slowing down for a better look at us.

Geraint watches the car pass

The car went past a few times, Henry filmed while I took yet more still photos, and then it was time to move onto the first cameo. Geraint walked along the street, enjoying his Diet Coke, and grinning inanely, when suddenly Foil Man appeared menacingly in the window of the students' car as they went past. Seeing this, Geraint spat out his mouthful of Diet Coke into the road. This looked hilarious. In fact, the first time through, Geraint actually mistook a taxi for the students' car, and spat Diet Coke at it - the people in the taxi were rather freaked, as you can imagine.

After another short bit of filming of the car going round a corner, it was time for my cameo. Since I appeared in one of Foiled Productions' earlier films, the rather dubious story of a man obsessed with a fluffy toy sheep (it was called Sheep Man) we decided that I should bring along this sheep (called Woolie) for my cameo. I walked out of Owens Park, the big student residence in Fallowfield, with Woolie under my arm, when suddenly the students' car went past and I jumped back, startled by Foil Man glaring out at me.

Howell and his sheep

After all this, Dave was feeling very hot from wearing the Foil Man costume for over two hours, so we decided it was time to finish up filming for the day.