But
how did all this Land-rovering start you may ask. Surprisingly,
for an archaeologist, I had hardly ever driven a Land Rover before
the TV work started. Wessex Archaeology, the organisation I worked
for in the 1980’s did have a couple of very horrible ex-army
ones that most people tried to avoid driving but apart from these,
nothing.
This all changed when I started work on Ancestors,
as the series producer, Ian Potts, a classic car enthusiast, decided
that I needed some transport to get around in and that would also
act as a bit of a trademark. We decided that a Land Rover would
be a good idea, that a canvas top would be useful as we could take
it off which would be better for filming (more natural light) and
Ian, bless him, decided that we needed a ‘classic’ Landy,
ideally a Series 1. This was based on the fact that his brother-in-law
had one but what Ian hadn’t considered was that we were intending
to use the vehicle to travel the length and breath of the country,
to tight filming schedules. So we started filming the first programme
without a vehicle but this just happened to be at a place called
Bleadon in Somerset and close by was a Land Rover specialist, Glastonbury
4 x 4. We originally went there to have a look at Series 3 but there
was a nice white 90 canvas top, ex-Somerset County Council and I
just had to have a test drive in that. I was amazed, it was so good
to drive, it had brakes! And so, despite Ian’s comments that
it was a ‘bit modern’, we bought it.
It wasn’t the ideal vehicle really. Cameramen
would complain that white was an awful colour to film, although
it always showed up well against the green of the countryside. The
firm suspension made filming from the cab interesting, the canvas
top (never meant to be taken off like a sports car hood) became
looser are looser and when it rained I got wet, canvas on or off.
Ian soon found novel ways of getting the driving shots he wanted,
standing up in the back with the canvas off, lying across the bonnet
between the screen and the spare wheel and dangling the camera down
by the front wheel to get good mud shots. He even trusted my driving
enough to put the camera in a deep rut on Salisbury Plain and let
me drive over it, wheels on either side of several thousand pounds
worth of fragile kit. I soon got to be a dab hand at driving a Landy
as smoothly as is possible for the cameras sake, although I have
never got used to the driving shots of me, I have to concentrate
and can’t listen to loud music, eat or talk to myself.
The only modification we made was for security
reasons. There isn’t anywhere in a rag top to keep anything
safe, so a car restorer friend, Andrew du Mont, welded up a large
lockable box which we bolted through the floor. This, painted white
looks like a small chest freezer and I soon got used to the comments
about the drinks cabinet in the back.
This first Landy, C771 DYC (where are you now?)
carried me from Dorset to Orkney, from the Jersey to Ireland and
across to East Anglia. It was my day-to-day transport, as much at
home on the M6 as in a field and I grew to realize what a fantastic
vehicle it was. Thirsty though, so we traded it in for a white 90Tdi,
a hardtop involving a certain amount of swapping over of bits to
make it look like the original one. We didn’t go to the lengths
of swapping registration numbers so I did get some e-mails about
the ‘new Land Rover’. And this is the one that I had
for four years, L940STP. I hope that the fact that I drove around
for seven years in a pair of decidedly second hand Landys will reassure
the viewing public that their license payers' money has been thriftily
spent. Contrast this to the new Discovery’s on Time Team
and Hidden Treasure - softies!
All this has had a terrible effect on me though,
as I have now become a convert to the ‘best 4 x 4 by far’.
The white 90 has now gone to an archaeological colleague in Northumberland
but I still have the 110. I suppose it’s something about driving
the vehicle that Top Gear viewers voted the most significant vehicle
ever produced, the sense that somewhere in the world, at any time
of the day or night, there is a Landrover doing an important job
(far more important than making TV programmes).
A final confession – in Portugal last year
the only 4 x 4 that we could hire was a Jeep. All the time I was
driving it (it was horrible) I remembered a sticker I had seen somewhere
‘I’d rather push my Land Rover than drive a Jeep’.
Sorry.
Julian
July 2004
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