Bud House - The start

Hey,

So, its been a long long while since my last update, 3 months!!! And an incredible amount has happened since my last update. So, I'm going to start with the Bud House experience and detail how it all was from my eyes. This will include production details, details of my expectations and the details of what I really thought about the whole experience.

I arrived in Cape Town after a long flight and through customs and into the arrivals lounge. This wasn't a normal experience as there were lots of people hanging around and people in all different colors of different nations being represented in the world cup. And yes these people were my fellow contestants in the reality show. First thing all of us wanted to do was to talk to each other, get to know each other, as in every day life this is a natural thing to do when you meet people. Now the scene is this, all contestants sitting around, bored, excited, nervous, absolutely full of emotions, with the age range being from 25 to 42 and we were NOT allowed to talk! It was completely insane and something that nobody had experienced before (well not necessarily nobody as I had similar experiences in Shipwrecked). The production had people assigned to keep this group of people quiet! Impossible job and for those people I apologise for being one who couldn't stop talking ha ha. Those who know me best will not be surprised one bit to hear that ha ha.

We then were Shepperd through the airport, with cameras set up everywhere, people everywhere wondering what on earth is going on, which actually I have to say was kind of fun. There was a lot of laughter and already a lot of banter was flying around all contestants, as we were there as football fan's after all. We had a few big scenes to shoot in the airport of the whole of the cast arriving in South Africa in preparation of the football world cup. I happened to be the first one to be filmed going down the elevator and in an England t-shirt caused a bit of a stir in the airport! Now the reason why was because one of our defenders, Mr Rio Ferdinand had just pulled out injured and his replacement Michael Dawson came out to South Africa straight away. Nobody in SA knew who Dawson was, and as I was being filmed in the airport people thought that I was actually him!!! (I WISH ha ha).

As a group we were put on a bus and taken to a nearby hotel for the next couple of days. The bus journey was the first opportunity that we had to really talk to each other (even though we were told not to many times). Being the "bad boy" I sat myself at the back of the bus which was my way of talking without being caught as much. Banter was flying amongst many and specifically with the French representative Daniel, and the New Zealand rep, Ollie. I knew straight from that moment on that we were going to have so much fun out there all together.

Arriving at the house was extremely exciting for all concerned as it had been a long few days and much longer for some having to travel from all over the world and take 3 flights to get to South Africa. The house was fantastic, a Spa and Golf resort located in St Helena Bay approximately 2 and a half hours outside of Cape Town on the West coast. It was beautiful, white and had been turned into a movie set! It was absolutely crazy! Production crew everywhere, Budweiser everywhere! Heaven ha ha.

This was where the real adventure for all of us began!