The Wine Adventurer's blog
Francis Gimblett
19 March 2010 - Held in reserve.
Groggy and disoriented, I come to and try to fathom my surroundings. Light creeps beneath a gap under the far door, but only enough to illuminate a small section of chequered linoleum. The rest of the room is in darkness. I can hear cars being parked and the plink of immobilisers through a window above, but the pane of glass has been blacked out. My hands are bound to the back of a cheap plastic chair that must have been designed to ensure the quick turnaround of employees on their lunch breaks. My joints ache and I want to stretch, but the bindings about my ankles allow no respite.
I hear shuffling from the other side of the door and the jangle of keys in the lock. My pupils contract as light floods into the room and I’m momentarily blinded. Then, blinking, I can just make out two blurred silhouettes in the doorway.
“What shall we do with him, supervisor?”
A sinister laugh precedes the answer. “He resisted the first two sessions; it seems we need to increase the dose before he will speak…”
I had been on my first undercover foray for Wine Adventurer TV and had entered Tesco with my covert pen camera in order to film their shelves of special offers. But I had underestimated my adversary - their security systems had been too sophisticated. Should I have forseen a camera detection sensor and their staff’s training in the darker arts?
“Good idea sir,” replied the first, a junior security operative. “No agent has ever got past a third glass of the half-price Australian Chardonnay.”
The supervisor advances and holds the bottle tauntingly at eye level; ‘Koala Creek Reserve’, the label reads. I realise I can take no more, and black out...
I awake sweating in my own bed. I glance to the alarm clock, then across to my sleeping wife, and realise that I’d been having a nightmare.
We had filmed the introduction to Wine Adventurer TV a couple of days ago and soon we would be embarking on our first undercover section in-store. I wondered just what I was letting myself in for…
4 March 2010 - We've been expecting you...
I’m ushered into a dimmed room towards a stage set before of a sea of tables, the chatter fading as I near the front. Waiters take their place next to their stations, their work at the tables done. Shadows dance across the candlelit features of expectant faces, and I wonder whether I should have turned up.
Waiting in the wings I had begun to feel something I hadn’t in years, and, unlike the sensation that must be felt by first-time Viagra takers, it didn’t feel good. I was nervous, really nervous. The butterflies that had started in my stomach had multiplied and were now assaulting the rest of my nervous system. I looked down to check that my clothes were still on and that I wasn’t just having one of those dreams that I used to have when I first started entertaining audiences. The suit was still there, which in a way wasn’t a blessing, because it meant that this wasn’t a dream.
A month earlier I had simply accepted this booking as I would any other gig and waited until a few days before to prepare my material. Normally I’m asked to create a tasting for people and to make it entertaining; but this time the subject was different, and, as I prepared, I became more uncomfortable with it.
This was my first literary talk and the subject was me. The day before I’d called the organiser and asked if they’d mind if I included a wine tasting and focussed less on me. They said no. I insisted that I’d provide the wine and glasses free of charge. They insisted again that they’d rather a talk.
I realised, in the silence before I was due to speak, that although I had made myself the focus of people’s attention hundreds of times before, all the time I had been hiding. To take a subject and make people laugh was a way of compensating for my own insecurity at being in the spotlight, but it had left the same person underneath.
However, as I began to speak the audience followed with interest instead of yawning, and they eagerly asked questions rather than looking to their watches. As I talked about that person, so I felt more comfortable with him. Maybe one day I’ll even be just as I portrayed him. How on earth I’ll get into MI5 and single-handedly defeat the forces of evil though, I’m not yet sure.
