Thursday February 9th, 2006
I’ve just got home having done my last appearance on the ITV1 Richard Hammond 5 o’clock show (the series has ended). I had a nightmare. As some of you will know I have a slight predilection for tapered stripy shirts. Along with flared jeans they’re my TV uniform (and to be fair I wear them off screen most of the time too). As normal today I went into the show, handed my blue with white striped shirts in to the wardrobe team to be steamed (it needs to be crisp as studio lights show up any poor ironing) and went on screen for the rehearsal.
Noooooooo. Sadly once tried on camera, the shirt strobed. This is the effect you see when it looks like someones’ clothes are moving alone on TV. Tight stripes or checks make it happen most of all. Well my shirt was a strober - it’s worked on telly before but never been worn in a studio setting. So it was downstairs to wardrobe to try on what they had. Not good. Not good at all. Most were neither striped nor tapered nor designed to be worn without a suit. The only options were Richard’s shirts, but to be honest they were so obviously Richard’s that wasn’t going to work (and I think they’d be too small too).
So it was the polo shirt I’d worn to the studio I had to don. Worse still the stripes were horizontal not vertical. There I was, on TV in just a T-shirt, arms bare to the world. I felt positively naked!!!
After I’d left the set, I heard the audience warm-up comedian comment on how I uncannily looked like a bar code….. Thankfully though the MSG called up after seeing the show and her first comment was ‘loved the T-shirt’.
