Today I my host was invited along to the the UK Premier of Pearl Harbor, where I ended up sharing popcorn with Geri Halliwell and walking between nobodies and celebrities at the after party, and more…
Bam Bam, one of Britain’s best and most-awarded radio-deejay, gave me a call after I had tried to contact him about his morning Breakfast Show on KissFM radio.
At some minutes after 9 am he called me live in his show and invited me over to be the guest on his Breakfast Show the next morning while he could let me stay for a day!
There was only one special thing lined up for today: he would take me to the UK Premier of this summer’s blockbuster Pearl Harbor!
That meant a dress code, celebrities, and a post premier party! Of course I immediately changed my complete planning for the coming days to experience something like this.
Bam Bam would pick me up around 3pm, so I had time enough to relax, have breakfast in the hot burning sun in the garden and play around with the kids a bit.
A German press agency seemed to had written about me, my pageviews blew up enormously – to a score I had never seen before. This complete day I gained over 10,000 visitors to this site. This may explain my site to become a little slow or even unreachable at certain times.
After 3pm I had packed everything again and got of in the Toyota Land Cruiser Limited Edition with the most popular radioguy of the UK!
Bam Bam is the artist-name of Peter Jarrod. “I know deejays doing their show and behaving big in cafes and restaurants,” he explains. “I don’t do that. On my show I use Bam Bam, and most times everybody around me uses that name.”
His radio thing is just his work and he loves to work hard for it and therefore doesn’t want to be this guy from the radio when he ever wants to go out. Then he’s just Peter again.
But the name Bam Bam is also his coverage when he pisses somebody or some organisation off on the radio (so the opposite side doesn’t know who he is). Like he does all the time on air and that’s what made him this popular. But you won’t find a picture of him anywhere easily.
On the way to his brand-new house, Bam Bam bought me dinner-deluxe-take-away at Kentucky Fried Chicken (how good is that!), which we ate at his home in his hardly furnished living room.
He just had to share this new DVD he had bought about Magic Man David Blaine, who recently almost frozed himself to death. “Amazing how this guy does his thing. You should really see his work, he even gets almost one feet of the ground -slowly- without any wires or help, unbelievable.”
After this healthy dinner we had to prepare for the UK Premier event of Pearl Harbor. We had to be at the Odeon theater on Leicester Square before 6.30pm and Bam Bam had arranged himself a car and a driver who would bring us there.
On the way to the Odeon cinema and the big spectacle Bam Bam showed me the exclusive tickets, which only celebrities and very important people seem to receive.
When we got at Leicester Square the car had to drive slowly on a lane turning around on the Square and already from the beginning of this lane people where staring at the car to get a glimm of any possible super star.
It was surprisingly really crowded. And then the car doors were opened by the door men of the theater and there are a huge amount of people behind fences!
As everybody looked at us to see who was a celebrity, cameras where already flashing like crazy. When I got out of the car and Bam Bam and I walked onto the red carpet to the entrance of the Odeon cinema, we really walked in the middle of a wall of photographers (of course wondering who we are, and if we were important enough to take pictures of), only a few cameras just kept on flashing.
But when the actress Kate Beckinsale arrived at this scene the flashing cameras where almost heating up the whole square. Everybody just got mad!
Thousands of fans had gathered outside the Odeon cinema to catch a glimpse of Beckinsale, Josh Hartnett and Trainspotting actor Ewen Bremner.
Kate: “This is much noisier and scarier than the opening night on Hawaii because this is Britain and my friends and family are all here!”
Once inside this cinema Bam Bam and I were just walking between big time celebrities, wanna-be’s and never-will-be’s. Bam Bam explained the complete atmosphere: “A normal person would have their heads out to spot one of the [for example] Spice Girls walking around, while one of the Spice Girls would only have her own head out for this certain director.”
And it was pretty visual: the two very over-dressed ladies sitting one row in front of us, were only looking all over the cinema to spot interesting faces and then share this sensation with each other.
Funny how Bam Bam and I ate our popcorn and talked about radio, internet and media things. The lady next to me offered her popcorn, which was placed on everybody’s seat. “I don’t like popcorn that much.”
Finally, almost 30 minutes later than announced, the lights went off and some man introduced the director of the movie, Jerry Bruckheimer, and a part of the cast: Kate Beckinsale, Josh Hartnett and Ewen Bremner, who came on stage for a short applause.
Then the movie started.
It really is a good movie, but don’t disappointed by the length of it: over 3 hours! I must say that if this was a 90 mins movie, it would only be a nice Hollywood-story.
The current 3 hours really get you into the story, so you’ll experience everything that happened around the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese, almost in real life. I mean, you’ll just get dragged into it as you are watching it.
As usual the special effects are ‘explosive’. I have people heard saying “It’s a love story!”, well: yes it is. Nowhere is stated that it isn’t. It’s about the events at Pearl Harbor and it is a good story.
But half way, seriously, I couldn’t hold it up much longer. I had to go to the toilets! Which meant I had to stand up and move out while everybody else was still watching the screen.
I made a little gesture for getting up, as I had to pass in front of a few people, and the lady next to me was like:
“Are you going to the toilet?”
“Yes, I am!”
“Bloody hell, I’ll join you!”
And both of us moved ourselves down the row and then walked to the exit of the movie hall together. Only then I saw who the lady next to me was: Geri Halliwell. And she turned left to the womens and I turned right to the mens. That was all, seriously! 🙂
After the movie, which was followed by a massive applause, everybody got out of the cinema and coaches took us to the Post Premier Party at the Senate House on Malet Street in London.
When we got there, the complete building was lit up with the American Flag and the Pearl Harbor screens on it. At the entrance uniformed soldiers where whistling and yelling to all the ladies coming in.
Once inside I bumped against Boy George, the artist who’s now a Friday night deejay on KissFM, and we met Belinda (the lady I am on the photo with). She is into the marketing of the movie Pearl Harbor and this whole premiere and a good friend of Bam Bam. Of course, she had to meet the world traveler.
The dress code was ‘military chic’, so I did well with my brown hat on. And the waitresses walking around with glasses of different wines looked like the nurses from the movie.
In the first hall a big band was playing the tunes from the 20’s to the 40’s and that was quite entertaining. Some professional dancers tried to warm up the dancefloor. Belinda challenged me to dance with her on that empty dancefloor, but just when I finally dared to take her hand, the band made room for a deejay and the old fashion swing time was over.
Bam Bam had arranged his car around midnight, so that was our time to go home eventually (he still is an early morning deejay). I enjoyed the free drinks (‘another Bacardi-coke, please’), the many celebs and the music.
The photographs I had taken of this event, where the only ones possible, because I was not really allowed to make them (to preserve the privacy of the many guests).
When Bam Bam and I got back home, we got on the internet for a few hours and it got over 3.30 am in the morning, when Bam Bam pulled the plug out of the computer.
“Ramon, you must go to bed now!”
With just two hours of sleep to go, my eyes closed very fast…
