31 May - Gangs and Hairy

Boo hoo, a friend was hoping to direct the last in the series of Ross Kemp on Gangs, but was turned down at the last hurdle, because Ross has had a good run of these docus filmed often in mildly dangerous circumstances to himself, and he doesn’t want to jinx the last one (gangs of Belize? Well, I never head of them so I wouldn’t be scared) by working with a new director and a suitable old hand is coaxed out of his previous refusal. More money? You never go wrong with that. Makes me smile to think butch Ross fears the jinx. Guess he couldn’t really wear his SAS protective clothing as worn on that other drama he's in (watched one for research with docu friend and we were mega bored) and it’s true that with most of the gangt programmes on youtube, the anonymity offered to the subjects of the docu at filming time is blown and yes, there could be some angry people out there sending messages to the gangs in Belize to just off him. Would make for great TV…

A day or two later the same director friend gets news that a planned docu in India where an American expert doctor in alopecia was going to travel and examine the DNA of the hairiest person on the planet to find if there’s a cure for baldness (yes, who wants to watch that we said, but work is work) gets told that the doctor has been told by her husband not to travel to India as he’s had a bad premonition about the trip and their child cold grow up motherles. Oh yeah? I think it’s because the budget was crap (director would have had to film as no budget for cameraman) and she didn’t want to rough it to Poone. What kind of scientist gets halted in her tracks by a premonition? Hardly scientific is it?

But so it is, that my docu director friend ends up being the jinxed one on this occasion.