MAY 1

WELCOME TO THE 10TH EDITION OF THE EUROVISION DIARY!

Stuhlia!

First of May! Holy cow, that means that we are actually within the same month as the actual show! One could think that we were just as nervous as a cow in Texas, but, in fact, we are happy as a fish in liquor!

Today is also known as workers holiday, at least in Scandinavia, but since we worked, I guess we have to find a new definition of ourselves!

10:00 PM, there was a bus picking up the PRG and Riedel crew for a night out on town. With my life at stake, I decided to join, since I wanted you guys to get a full report of this evening. It will be posted tomorrow!

So, Big Al decided that attack is the best defence, and he COMPLETELY shocked me, and the whole of Scotland, when he sneaked up on me and gave me a fat juicy kiss on the cheek!

So, while we are on the subject, I thought we could continue with Aggreko a couple of minutes. I sent out Joan Lyman to find Jono,  put her life on the line, and come back with a report of what these guys actually do!

Over to you Joan!

Thanks boss! Today we’ll visit with the Aggreko guys who supply us with all our generator needs (in addition to kisses!) Aggreko is from the UK and now our steak and kidney pie is missing so we’re suspicious……

Here’s part of the crew doing their best male model pose. L to R: Jono Rose, Ian Peniston, Steve Goodman, “Big Al” (peeking through) McClure, and Phil Cunningham.

Here’s some more! Steve Bower, Rob Anderton and Paul Ilsley. In his spare time, Paul likes to dress as a giant human banana, as you do……..

So here are the guys watching over 6 out of the total 14 generators used for this production. The first 4 you see, starting from the furthest, are for PRG lights, video and rigging generating 4 Megawatts of power. Another 2 are for OB and the portable offices outside (2 Mw), 1 for air conditioning (1 Mw), 2 for catering and the press center (1.5 Mw), 2 for OB for other countries ( .5 Mw), plus 1 Megawatt spare and they’re all backed up!  We’ll use an estimated 400,000 liters of diesel over the course of the production to power these babies. But we all drive Smart cars so it makes up for it……..

And if these guys mess up, this is one of the things that can happen.

And if these guys mess up, this is one of the things that can happen.

And here’s our own waterslide! Weee! Actually these are the ducts to deliver the nice cool air over the stage so the lights don’t die.

Here’s the distribution panels for the PRG dimmers, video and rigging. There are 145 distribution boards with 632 sockets and 33,160 meters (over 20 miles) of cable!

Steve “Silverback” Goodman monkey-ing around. The crew has been playing “I wanna be like you” from The Jungle Book just to annoy him. 🙂

Back to you Ola!

Thanks Joan! Is this Paul, or the real deal?

Sven-Egil Hernes takes a stroll with his kick bike. He completely missed a sharp turn in one of the hallways today, and now there is a body print of him in the wall. I saw it happen, but promised not to tell anyone, so I won’t!

Dimmer area 3!

Here is Bruno! He makes sure that all the empty PRG cases are trucked over to the Frontlite warehouse.

Tino, Elmar and Uwe chilling out at FOH. Al will be so happy! He’s getting a green carpet up there this year!

Aidan is patching about half of the world’s Virtuoso nodes here. We have 46, there are 110 in the world! Groovy.

Zorro has the work shop up and running,

The man in the yellow hat is Hasse Lindmo, our dear TV Producer! Man in the blue hat is Alexander Rybak, the winner of Eurovision 2009. They are both the reason why we are here! And on that note, a VERY special THANK YOU to you Hasse for looking after us and taking care of us the way you do! I’ve said it before, but I can NOT stop repeating myself, this is WORLDCLASS Norway!

So, if any of the cables are broken, you can blame this man, using them as jungle vines!

SHARE THE MOMENT! Here is the next dance move for the Flash Mobs!

Monday May 3, they will record from L’Alfas del Pi in Spain. Be there, or be boring!

And here is Henrik Ibsen with the Norwegian quote of the day:

¨It is inexcusable for scientists to torture animals; let them make their experiments on journalists and politicians¨

And…. You know that you’ve worked with events too long when:

1* How good a pair of trousers are is proportional to the number of pockets they have.

2* You forgot what political correctness is.

3* You remember what politcal correctness is, but actively ignore it.