[warren brown]

Hi everyone, thanks for your interest! Actually, my input came about after the whole show had been finished. If you have a look, everyone else interviewed is beautifully backlit in marvellous surroundings - and I'm actually in a whopping close-up because I was interviewed on the producer's front veranda! What happened was, they had had serious problems with the first episode, finding people - other than curators or historians - who could talk about very early motoring in Australia, particularly about Frank Birtles and make him interesting and relevant to a contemporary audience. I've been writing his biography for Hachette Publishing over the past eight months and even though various people were throwing my name at them, they were reticent to make any contact. "He's that guy from Top Gear... etc etc". Eventually I received a phone call from the producer who was very apologetic for not having contacted me earlier, but would I be prepared to talk about Birtles? ...my name kept coming up from various museums and libraries they'd been to ... and so he came over with the finished episode on his laptop. Then when he saw the Bean 14 in the shed ready to go - he nearly had heart seizure! He was framing it up for camera angles and poring all over it... So one morning, I took the Bean over to North Head National Park and we filmed it and then conducted the interview at his house. The car hasa brand new SU on the engine which had recently been rebuilt by a racing engine-works - the brief was to increase horsepower somewhat, but not at the expense of reliability. On the day it kept fouling up at the plugs - it turned out they'd - wait for it - honed down the carby needle - fine when the thing was hot, but stop-start filming at dawn in winter wasn't a go. I had to pull the plugs out on the way to the producer's house and brush them clean them en route - hence my manky, black fingernails during the interview.
The episode I saw beforehand was virtually as it is now - I wasn't necessarily convinced of the recreations - Birtles was three-stone wringing wet and built like a jockey - and they had a front-row-forward for the Wallabies playing him - and there were photographic innacuracies I pointed out, Model A Fords in a Model T section, no pictures of Birtles Brush car etc, but there wasn't really anything they could do by then - it was all 'in the can' as they say. My section was pasted in. However, I think it's great - so many people where I work really enjoyed it , "never heard of Birtles...amazing".
Paul the producer is a terrific bloke who wants to tell a story - and I think he's told it very well. It's about getting the feel for it...and I think you'll like the other episodes...