On my travels that day, I came across a copy of the Samui-Phangan Real Estate guide and found what I was looking for, an agent who dealt with luxury villa rentals. I called them and arranged a meeting that afternoon.

To my surprise, I was overwhelmed with choice. I had no idea of the amount of villa development on the island. I mentioned to the agent I wanted a villa with a westerly aspect and this narrowed my choice. I asked for copies of the photographs he had of the villas as I thought this would save me having to visit all of them. However, I wanted to visit one or two villas just to get the feel for the location and check that the photographs I had seen were not in any way misleading!

We travelled in his super-sized 4x4 - just what I needed to ferry the director around in. On this recce I did discover one thing, some of the photographs the agent showed me were a little bit misleading, although I do not believe that was intentional. The villas we visited were more like hillside villas than beachfront, however, they all had seaviews. After a long afternoon of driving up and down hills - some of it off road - I eventually got to see a beachfront villa. The villa had a Thai style roof and was only metres from the beach. Funny, but it turned out to be close to the agents office. Why on earth he didn’t take me there to begin with I’ll never know.

Based on this excursion around Samui, I arranged with the agent to see more villas on his list, but stressed they ALL had to be beachfront!

Only beachfront villas will do

It has now been a week since I arrived in Koh Samui and I feel I am losing touch with what is going on back in London. Perhaps, I am becoming paranoid, but sometimes, when I am away on location I get the feeling that one has been forgotten about, that you are somehow lost on location.

I decided to call Polly, my agent, to see if there was any other work coming up. This is silly really because I know that if there was work booked in for me she would have called to give me the dates. Polly is great; it is always good talking to her. She chatted about the weather in London and I told her about Samui and said it was the perfect holiday island. As for work, she said the phones had been very quiet lately. I left it at that and said I would call her next week.

I normally check my e-mails at the end of the day and not the morning because of the time difference. Expecting to hear good news from the accountant, I was surprised to find there were no e-mails from the production company. To put it mildly this is not good as now I will have to break my number one rule and use my own money, but I have no choice. Let’s hope that when the director arrives he will have some float.

The weekend is approaching and I am feeling anxious again. I haven’t heard a thing from anyone. I tried to call the producer only to be told by a snooty receptionist that she was shooting on location and couldn’t be reached. I felt like saying, had she not heard of mobile phones? I tried to get the producer’s number, but the receptionist told me she did not have it. I then asked to speak to someone in the office and she told me they were all away. I can’t believe there would be no one in the office. How can they all be out on location and not leave someone, like their runner, to man the phones?

I gave up for the day and went for a long walk on the beach.

The weekend passed and still no word. Perhaps, I should leave Koh Samui and return to London. No, it would just be my luck that, if I did, then the director would arrive and my name would be mud and I would never work again. I put such thoughts to the back of my mind and decided to stick with my original plans.

departure gate

At last, I have found what I think would be the perfect villa for this commercial. It is a luxury beachfront villa situated in a picturesque bay. The villa has a huge pool in front of it and ten paces from the pool, across a patch of grass, is the beach. Because it is in a small bay the beach is effectively private; no one can reach it without going through the villa. That will please the assistant director, as he won’t have to worry about crowd control.

I e-mail the photographs to the production company. By now I am beginning to wonder if they have actually received any of my previous e-mails.

Later that day I get an SMS (so they have got my mobile number after all) saying the director would be arriving tomorrow on PG103 at 07.05, which is the first flight from Bangkok. It was sent, not from the producer, but an assistant, another would-be producer no doubt!

I arrived at the crack of dawn in a Grand Jerokee I had hired for the occasion, parked and proceeded to the meeting point and there I stood as the minutes ticked by.

The first flight arrived, then the second, then the third. By the time the fourth flight arrived at 08.45 I was getting worried. I looked up at the arrivals board. No cancellations and all the flights were coming in on time. Well it wouldn’t be the first time I told myself. I started to wonder if I had somehow missed him, but that was impossible. I had been told where I was standing was definitely the meeting point and in any case he wouldn’t have a clue where to go.

By the time the 10 ‘o’ clock flight had arrived I was ready to give up. I knew there was no point in phoning the production company as they would all be in bed. I wondered if they had had the sense to give the director my mobile number.

I left a message with Bangkok Air with my mobile number on it and headed back to Fisherman’s Village to wait for his call. It never came. I eventually called the airport and spoke to Bangkok Air again. They said they would try and trace him and get back to me. I eventually got a call back and they told me that no one of that name was on their passenger list.

The following day, with still no word from London, I decided if I could not reach anyone later that day I would call Polly and ask her to contact them and find out what was going on.

By now I was feeling abandoned. I got a call back from Polly and she told me the job had been cancelled, something about the director and LA!

All there was left for me to do was put in my invoice and expenses and hope they pay me.

Polly asked “When will I be back in London?” With no work on the horizon, I told her I would be taking a break...a holiday in KOH SAMUI.

Fade OUT