Tour guides’ few minutes of fame
Two Arundel historic tour guides have been given a surprise phone call by BBC’S Escape to the Country.
Martin Alderton, 64, and Karen Tunnicliffe, 60, were a few minutes into watching an episode of Escape to the Country when their phone rang and took them by complete surprise on Wednesday, April 13.
“‘Hello, it’s Escape to the Country’, ‘oh hello, we are watching you as we speak’,” said Martin, who is a fulltime postman when he’s not touring the streets of Arundel.
He added: “It was such a strange one. We take phone calls every day from people wanting a tour of Arundel, and we were five minutes into watching Escape to the Country when the phone rang.
“I answered and it and put it on speaker so Karen could hear and it turned out to be someone from Escape to the Country, it was one of those weird moments.
“It turned out they were filming a Sussex episode, someone wishing to move to the county, and Arundel was part of the area they had specified in their list of wants.
“They wanted us to do a piece to camera about Arundel and what it’s like to live, work and play here. We filmed about 10 minutes in all.
“I imagine they probably did three hours of filming around
the town with interviews included, and it will be cut down to around two minutes on screen, if we get a snippet we will be very lucky and amazed.
“It’s all positive, actually getting Arundel onto the TV away from the castle is great because every time a film crew come here, it’s always about the castle but to actually have something in the town and to be able to tell a little bit of histroy that encourages people to want to find out more.”
Filming was quite straightforward, said Martin: “I was expecting to see the people that were looking to live here and the presenters but they weren’t in the town at the time, so it was literally just the film crew.
“The woman asked me
questions slightly off camera and I had to talk to her rather than looking at the camera.
“You’re talking to the audience, but you aren’t, you are actually talking to the lady asking the questions and to try and keep your eye off the camera is quite difficult, you’re just tempted to keep looking in the lense.
“Because I’ve done the tours for 10 years, it comes quite easy when a question is asked. I’ve already got most of the answers and details they are looking for, and because of my experience as a tour guide I can answer in a way that outsiders can understand. “I loved every minute of it.” Martin said it may take around three months to get through production, so it may not be on air until the end of summer.