The other day, me and The Pink House's photographer Susie Lowe were styling and shooting a story for Primark at my place. The shoot was of predominantly pink home decor, to accompany a couple of features on me and The Pink House for Primark's brand new series 'At Home With' - have a read HERE (Q&A) and HERE (On The Bookshelf - about some of my fave books).
But what you can't read on the Primark posts is what really went down on the photoshoot (fixed grin emoji; facepalm emoji). So here, just for you lot, I reveal 7 things that happened behind the scenes...
1) I was sacked
Look how smooth the cover is (no thanks to me)
Just out of shot: Susie banging her head repeatedly against the wall
Although you can't it see in the shots, my super-king-sized bed was much too large for the double duvet covers we were sent, so I kept trying to smooth them down on the side we were shooting. Except I only succeeded in making it worse, until I could actually see smoke coming out of Susie's ears. After about 10 minutes of this I was sacked from duvet duty and dispatched to make Susie a super-strong black coffee.
2) This coffee is cold. And two years out of date
Don't drink the coffee
Ain't nobody got time for this coffee
When I say 'this coffee', clearly I'm not referring to the coffee I made Susie to stop her from killing me for Duvetgate; that was a posh Nespresso Indriya capsule (Photoshoot Rule #1: don't fool with your photographer). Nope; I'm talking about the 'styled' coffee you see in the pretty rose gold cafetiere above - I didn't want to waste one of my precious caffeine capsules, so I found a massively out of date jar of stuck together granules at the back of the cupboard and poured on some cold water. Delicious!
3) We dropped the 'H'
And I don't mean in a My Fair Lady "'artford, 'ereford and 'ampshire" kind of way, but in a "where the hell is the 'H'? I'm trying to write 'The Pink House' on the lightbox" kind of way. Because THE PINK OUSE isn't quite the same. Luckily we found the H under Susie's handbag. Or should I say 'andbag.
4) There was an elephant in the room
Should the elephant go here...
...or here...
...or how about here?
There was a rose gold Primark elephant candle holder in my living room. And try as we might, Susie and I just COULD NOT AGREE on where it should sit (stand). I think we were feeling the pressure of styling it on top of the styling bible that is Styled by Emily Henderson. Whatever the reason, we faffed about with that effing elephant for bloody ages.
5) There was total confusion
Spot the difference 1
Spot the difference 2
One thing you might not know about Primark, is that they sell different products in different regions. And because Susie and I were shooting a story for two different regions, we had two sets of product to work with. So we used a high tech system of writing notes on pieces of paper and putting them next to stuff to ensure they didn't get muddled up. And they didn't. Until they did. ARGGHH! We managed to sort it out in the end, but not before Susie had taken a whole series of photos in which the rose gold basket from shot 1 (above), ended up, erroneously, in shot 2. Guess who had to make more coffee?
6) I nearly killed the faux plants
Stunt plant 1
Stunt plant 2
I'm an expert in killing my real plants, but who knew I could be such a menace to the faux ones too? For some reason (too much coffee...?) I kept dropping the pretty little fake plants Primark had sent us to shoot (one literally fell all the way down the stairs). Luckily the plants are hardy and the damage was minimal. Just don't look too closely at the one on the left, OK?
7) Susie is a massive muppet
So finally, the shoot was a wrap, and declared a big success, despite points 1 to 6, above. I waved Susie off as she drove away with all her camera equipment (and a few choice Primark goodies).
Did I say ALL her equipment? Sadly not. About an hour after she'd gone, I went back up to the playroom (where the above shot was taken) to discover a tripod standing perkily in the middle of the floor. Susie needed it for another shoot the next day so had to execute a 45-minute round trip from her North Edinburgh home with her clearly overjoyed son Sean to come and get it. I made her a coffee.
