by Jay Onrait
CHAPTER 34
The Battle for 221B Baker Street
OUR PRODUCTION MANAGER, Nicole Anderson, had found a wonderful costume shop in London and had started to source out some great outfits. She ended up going with two classics: an old-time “London bobby” police officer and a pretty authentic Sherlock Holmes outfit. There was no rhyme nor reason to choosing either of these costumes for use on our show. We were simply trying to get the most English stuff into the show as possible.
First, we decided to use the London bobby costume. It was so simple. I dressed up in the full gear and ended up finding a bobby officer helmet at a corner store. Plastic, cheap, perfect. Carol, our English makeup artist, kindly provided me with some moustache glue and I applied a pretty thick fake duster under my nose. Normally, I needed only a month to grow a beautiful soup strainer, but we didn’t have that kind of time right now—the fake one would have to do. Unfortunately, I tend to sweat right above my upper lip, and the ’stache kept falling off my face and onto the ground. No matter.
Dean set up his camera in Trafalgar Square in the middle of the day when tons of people were wandering around and lining up to get into the National Gallery. Real police officers were everywhere. I wandered up to them in my outfit and proceeded to make small talk. Dean had outfitted me with a small microphone that picked up every word of our conversation. The real cops were on to me quickly, but they played along nicely. I spent the rest of the shoot wandering around the square and pretending to help tourists. I even ran into a pair of Buddhist monks. The entire shoot was completed without incident and proved to be a big hit.
Then there was Sherlock Holmes.
The idea was to put on the Holmes outfit, hop into the car with Ian, and have him drive us to Sherlock Holmes’s address: 221B Baker Street. It was about a fifteen-minute drive from Trafalgar Square in central London with all the traffic. We hoped to simply get some shots of me wandering around Sherlock’s address, and that was honestly about it. As I said, none of these shoots were elaborately planned. We hoped to get in and out of there without much trouble. Instead, the exact opposite happened.
When we pulled up to 221B Baker Street, we noticed that someone had had the foresight to build a Sherlock Holmes Museum there. Standing right at the doorway of the famous address was a tall chap like myself dressed in full Sherlock Holmes gear. Though we may have been biased, Dean, Ian, and I all agreed that my rented Sherlock costume was actually better than the one the official museum Holmes was sporting. After we cased the joint for a few minutes from our car, the museum Sherlock wandered inside, likely to relieve himself after a busy morning spent taking pictures with tourists.
We quickly sprang into action: Dean set the camera up right in front of the doorway of 221B and I stood in front of it with my plastic pipe, making very serious and pensive detective faces. That should have been it. We should have peeled out of there and been done with the place. But suddenly I was the centre of attention. All of the tourists standing around waiting to get pictures with Sherlock Holmes now thought I was the Holmes hired by the museum. Suddenly, I had a lineup of people standing by with their iPhones and cameras wanting to get a picture with Sherlock. I gamely played along, and Dean continued to roll camera on the entire thing. Surely we could use this material. I might have just stayed there all day until I felt a hand in the small of my back nudge me forward, and a condescending voice behind me said, “I’m going to need you to get off these steps, please.”
It was the other Sherlock.
He had a smug and unimpressed look on his face. There was anger in his voice. I had stepped into his tiny spotlight, taken away the one thing in his life that gave him joy, and he was not happy about it. I conceded the step to him and directed the tourists to start taking pictures with the “real” Sherlock. We had pretty much all the material we needed for the shoot anyway. Dean continued to get shots of the exterior of the building for cover purposes. I wandered back on the sidewalk, but the tourists continued to flock toward me and away from the “real” Sherlock. It was beyond my control, and I wasn’t about to stop taking pictures with people when they had come all this way to get pictures with Sherlock Holmes. The “real” Sherlock was clearly unimpressed that he was no longer the star of the show. All this was delighting me to no end.
Once Dean had indicated he was finished shooting, he gathered his camera and I grabbed his tripod. I just realized that sounds dirty. I did not grab his penis. I grabbed the actual tripod that he used to host his camera in one place. We started to make our way back to Ian’s car, walking past the “real” Sherlock one last time. I simply could not resist.
As I walked by, he looked up at me, and I flipped him the bird. Gave him the finger. Whatever you want to call it. I really felt he deserved it after the way he had treated us that day, but I wanted to be subtle, didn’t want to cause a scene. I thought I had made my point and life would continue on.
But the “real” Sherlock had other ideas.
We walked across the street, and Dean took some more shots of me wandering around in my Holmes outfit. We then declared ourselves done and set the camera up next to the car so we could look into Dean’s camera monitor; he played back the footage he had just shot so we could make sure we had everything we needed before we took off back to our little temporary office in Trafalgar Square. Dean and I were both peering into the monitor and commenting on the stuff he had shot. I looked up for some reason and saw a man near the Holmes museum about thirty feet away. He pointed in my direction and started walking toward me with purpose. I looked behind me. Was he pointing at me? He looked to be a normal guy in a white shirt and black trousers. All of a sudden he was right in front of me.
“Flip me the bird, will you!” he screamed while reaching back and trying to deliver what I can only describe as a “slap” toward my face. Imagine during Shakespearean times when English gentlemen would duel each other by slapping each other with their gloves. That was pretty much what this guy tried with me, except without gloves. I managed to lean back in a nonchalant way and avoid the blow. He had removed his costume and was now ready to fight me over the fact that I had given him the finger. The finger! In North America, motorists give each other the finger every 1.3 seconds. It’s practically like waving at this point. When I finally realized what was going on, I started laughing.
Dean and Ian quickly stepped in between us, to his objection: “Standing behind your tough friends, eh?” he screamed. I was disappointed. Why hadn’t he just left his Holmes outfit on? Imagine how much funnier this would be to onlookers if two guys dressed as Sherlock Holmes started fighting in front of the Sherlock Holmes museum? It would have been a true Borat moment. Amazingly, two London police officers were standing nearby watching the entire thing, and they grabbed the “real” Holmes and dragged him away to calm him down. The three of us looked at each other in disbelief. Had that really just happened? Had I just been “slap-attacked” by a man who was likely a frustrated actor trying to make ends meet by working at a cheesy museum? Indeed I had. The Olympics!
That night we encountered no trouble whatsoever at legendary jazz club Ronnie Scott’s, a Soho institution we frequented throughout the Games, listening to jazz and quietly talking about that evening’s show while drinking double gin and tonics. We managed to squeeze into a booth and proceeded to get drunk. Young British couples were snogging in booths near us. Local players would finish the night, and I was always amazed how young they were and that young people were still so passionate about jazz. It made me feel good.
After the bar closed, we all hopped into rickshaws and raced back to our hotel, where we closed down the lobby bar. We ordered chicken tikka masala and several rounds of double double gin and tonics and a few shots of tequila and then charged the entire bill to TSN reporter Brent Wallace’s room because Brent never came out with us. The night continued until there were only three of us sitting in the lobby, absolutely wasted, when CTV lighting director Slobodan Marin walked in through the front
door at 5:00 a.m. after his overnight shift of Brian Williams’s CTV Olympic Prime Time show.
“Do you want to come with me to see the Dream Team play tomorrow?” he asked.
Without thinking I said yes immediately. Of course I wanted to see Kobe, LeBron, and the best U.S. basketball players beat up on some unfortunate Eastern European country. I crashed and grabbed a few hours of sleep, and then I woke up and met Slobo in the lobby. He looked absolutely shocked to see me.
“Oh! You’re a tough guy!” he said. I think he was being serious.
“I’m not feeling great, but I’m a man of my word!” I lied. I honestly had no idea how I’d managed to wake up and make it down to the lobby at this hour.
“You know what my dad used to say when I was growing up in Serbia and I started going out to bars with my friends and staying up all night?”
I waited intently …
“If you’re going to be a man at night, you’d better be a man in the morning.”
CHAPTER 35
Our Makeup Artist Nearly Dies
WE WATCHED THE CLOSING CEREMONY at Canada House in Trafalgar Square. I really wanted to grab scalper tickets and see Blur at Hyde Park in what was purported to be their last ever show, but I figured it didn’t make much sense for me to take off by myself and see a concert I didn’t even have tickets for. Plus, no one else was interested in going. I wasn’t too heartbroken at the time. I figured after the past three weeks it was only appropriate I go out and get drunk with the gang who had gone through all this madness with me; I didn’t want to be an anti-social weirdo. Turns out I should have been an anti-social weirdo. That night might have turned out much better than it did.
Carol, our makeup artist, was one of the most posh people I had ever met. Proper language, great taste in restaurants, and well connected. She told us of barbeques on weekends that she would attend. I imagined they featured a number of different types of cucumber salads on a beautifully decorated garden table, with plenty of society talk. She was Bill and Melinda Gates’s personal makeup artist whenever they travelled to Europe for charity work. She had worked extensively in film and television. In fact, it seemed as if she was slumming it a bit working for a Canadian sports network during these Games. She was a lovely lady and she immediately seemed to take a shine to Dean, our camera operator, who was equally kind to her and tried to make her feel welcome. Each night we hosted the “Olympic Suppertime Spectacular,” it would be Dan and me on the desk, Dean behind the camera, and Carol in a chair nearby, ready to do makeup touch-ups whenever needed. She laughed at all our jokes and sketches. It was a great little group.
After we finished the final show on the Trafalgar Square set, the entire crew headed to Canada House. Molson representatives had been present throughout the Games, even bringing over the occasional case of beer to the set and allowing us to borrow ice from them to keep our energy drinks cold. The evening of the closing ceremony, the Molson Canadian was flowing freely and so was the red and white wine. It was a blast watching the ceremony with a room full of Canadians, no major celebrities unless you count the twins from Property Brothers, who were actually flooded with requests for pictures. I approached them for a picture since my mom is a fan. They had absolutely no idea who I was.
After the Spice Girls appeared on TV to what was easily the loudest ovation of the night, the crowd started to thin out a bit, and most of our crew decided to make their way across the city to attend the CTV Olympic Consortium wrap party. I stayed behind with Dan and Carol. At one point toward the end of the ceremony the three of us sat in front of a huge plasma screen watching Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend play a few Who hits. Dan excused himself to use the washroom, and I leaned over to Carol and said, “Roger Daltrey’s voice still sounds great, doesn’t it?” expecting her to wax poetic about her love of the English band. But Carol didn’t have a response. It’s not that she didn’t have anything to say about the subject matter, she just literally did not respond. I paid it no attention, figuring she was just tired.
Thirty seconds later Carol stood up, and before I could take my eyes off the screen to see what was happening, she teetered in one spot for a half-second before tipping forward and falling flat on her face with an enormous THUMP. She did this in front of 300 people. Time stood still. I was horrified. How had I not seen how drunk she was. Did she have a concussion? Was she dead?
No time to lament past decisions. I fell down on my knees as she slowly turned over. She was awake, but barely. A crowd of horrified Canadians had gathered at that point, every one of them probably wishing they hadn’t invited the TSN people to their closing ceremony party. Thankfully, because so many athletes were on hand, plenty of trainers and sports medicine people were there too. There was also a doctor from Surrey, B.C., who was attending the Olympics with his family while volunteering at Canada House. Thankfully, Carol would get the care she needed. I know you’re reading this and thinking that the only “care” Carol needed was sleep, water, and half a bottle of Advil, but I was genuinely paranoid about the possibility she might have a concussion after that head-slam.
The doctor and two sports medicine people carefully helped her to a chair and kept her there for the next hour and a half, asking her questions about her whereabouts, who she was, whether she had someone waiting for her at home, and so on. The whole thing was pretty shocking, to be honest. I had no idea she had consumed that much alcohol. Later, during a discussion on one of our podcasts, Dan confessed to repeatedly returning to the bar to fetch her glass after glass of white wine. I joked that he was an enabler, but the truth is he was just fetching booze for everyone. The sports medicine personnel were not happy about the idea of sending Carol home alone. Dan had wandered off at this point, and I realized it was up to me to make sure Carol made it back to her flat in Kensington safe and sound. I gamely volunteered to escort her, mostly because I felt responsible for her fall, but also because I genuinely liked Carol. She had been nothing but kind and warm to Dan, Dean, and me, and this was not the way I wanted her Olympic experience to end.
It took us a while to hail a cab since it was the night of the closing ceremony, but we finally flagged one down and Carol managed to slur her address coherently enough for the driver to understand. The entire ride consisted of me answering the same three questions over and over:
“Did any of the other crew see what happened?” [No.]
“Will you tell anyone?” [No.]
“I swear on the Holy Bible this has never happened before. Do you believe me?” [No. But I will gladly say yes if you stop asking the same three questions.]
As we drove through the streets on my final night in London, I couldn’t help but think this was probably an appropriate way for my Olympic experience to end. I had complained about my role, not getting what I thought I deserved, and in the end I got exactly what I deserved: escorting the drunkest woman in the drunkest city on the planet back to her flat with absolutely no chance of sex as a reward. Karma is a bitch.
When we finally arrived at Carol’s flat, I asked the driver if he would mind waiting a few minutes so I could escort her up the steps to her door. He agreed and we began to exit the cab, at which point I realized Carol couldn’t walk on her own. She draped her arm around my shoulder, and I basically dragged her across her quiet Kensington side street to her front door. She managed to find her keys, but once we were inside she informed me there was no elevator. “Which floor are you on?” I asked.
“Free,” she replied. I guess that meant three. This was going to be a challenge.
Have you ever dragged a lifeless body up two flights of stairs? I don’t recommend it, but that was the task in front of me that night.
“I’m fine. Honestly!” pleaded Carol.
Good luck. The woman couldn’t even climb a stepladder by herself much less navigate two flights. She once again draped her arm around me, and I pulled her up the creaky, old steps. The building was very old and the stairway was very narrow, making it very likely the toughes
t workout I had experienced in three years.
Step by step we made our climb, Carol continuing to ask the same three questions the entire time, genuinely fearful she had somehow done damage to her career. The only damage she was doing was to my back.
Finally, we made it to her front door. Wobbly, barely holding her up, exhausted, sweating out the alcohol I had consumed, but we had made it. She teetered beside me as she once again fumbled with her purse in search of the key to her door. At that moment, she stopped and looked up at me with puppy dog eyes. I expected her to begin a long, rambling, and incoherent speech about how grateful she was that I had taken her all this way and made sure she was safe. How I was a true gentleman for following through and putting her safety ahead of my enjoyment on this final evening in one of the world’s great cities. I looked into her eyes. She opened her mouth and said, “I wish Dean were here.”
The next day as I went to check out of the hotel, I knew I still had the matter of the vomit-stained sheets and mattress bill to settle up. One hundred and twenty pounds worth. Wandering through the hotel lobby, I managed to track down the hotel manager, the one who’d sent me the third and final letter.
It had been a full two weeks since the incident, two weeks of the Olympic Games, two weeks of late nights in the hotel bar, where the bartenders and waitresses knew us by name. Where the concept of ordering a “double double” became a nightly normalcy—a “double double” in this case being four shots of gin, a splash of delicious English tonic, and a squeeze of lime. Two weeks of us unwinding in the pit of the hotel on a nightly basis and charging a good chunk of the bills back to our own rooms. It took a moment to jog his memory.
He printed out my room charges and soon remembered who I was: “There’s nothing I can do for you, sir; the mattress and sheets were damaged.”