Yeti Hunting in Latvia, 2023

Back in January 2003, I was cast in an advert for Squarespace. They wanted me to play a Bigfoot Tour Guide and it was one line; “anything!” in an American advert.

I lived in Scotland at the time and they wanted to treat all cast as London hires. This is common, it’s much easier to get flights from London to anywhere than it is from Scottish airports but it would mean that I’d have had to get to (and back from) London at my own expense.

Fortunately, the production team on the advert listened to reason as there were direct flights to Riga from Edinburgh. So I flew out of Edinburgh on a Saturday night and came back on a Tuesday night (arriving in the wee small hours of Wednesday morning.)

The thing is that I normally don’t get to have a look around where I am much if I’m out doing an advert. They don’t take a lot of time in general and you are almost always there.

The usual sort of routine of things I get to see goes a bit like this:

Home, taxi, airport, car, hotel, make up, wardrobe, set, wardrobe, car, hotel, airport, taxi, home.

Fortunately, this time it was all night shoots so I arrived around 10pm Latvian time, went to the hotel, slept and spent the Sunday doing hair and makeup tests along with wardrobe trials. I was back at the hotel for about 6pm and my call time on the Monday was 5pm so I had all day to wander about a bit (and sleep, I did do that.)

My flight back was late on the Tuesday so I also got wander a bit on the Tuesday and headed to the airport about 6pm.

This way to the Yeti Hunting Gallery