Laying bare what film folk really want

Today, a complete story set in the wonderful world of the British film industry, so a short story, obviously.

Once upon a time, there was a village in Yorkshire called Watherton, where people liked to come and make TV programmes. There were three reasons for this. One, the village was small and pretty. Two, there was a nice pub with plenty of rooms in which the crew could stay. Three, it wasn't near an airfield, or a railway line, or any of the things which drive a TV director mad with interruptions to filming.

Oh, and four, the inhabitants were easy to work with, and quite blasé about filming, having seen it so often. This meant they didn't gather and gawp during the filming of "Daleside Surgery", or "Wuthering Vets", or "'Appen It'll Rain Tonight", or any of the familiar programmes which poured out of Watherton.

No, the film people liked to come to Watherton.

Which is more than can be said for the people of Apdale.

Apdale was a village five miles from Watherton. It was quite pretty, but no programmes were ever made there. No tourists ever came to Apdale to see where anything had been filmed, with the result that Watherton had four busy shops, a cafe and a good restaurant, whereas Apdale only had a post office which never sold quite what you wanted.

One day, the people from Apdale Council went to Watherton Council and asked if just one programme might be made at Apdale.

"'Tain't up to us," said Watherton. "It's the film people who decide. They seem to like Watherton more than Apdale. Can't blame them."

But the Apdale people were desperate for a bit of publicity. So they proposed a deal.

"Couldn't we take the credit for just one of your programmes?" said Apdale. "Even though it was filmed in Watherton, couldn't you let on it were actually made in Apdale, and we'd get the credit and some of your crowds? And be able to open a small souvenir shop?"

The Watherton people consulted among themselves and decided they couldn't bloody well see why Apdale should get the bloody credit for Watherton's bloody hard work. That's not how they put it, of course. What they said was they regretted, but they could not see their way to acceding to Apdale's request, and they suggested that Apdale thought up some scheme of their own, or, as they put it privately, got off up their bloody backsides and did summat about it.

And that's how Apdale got the idea of recreating the original Olympic Games. Someone at Apdale wondered why they couldn't be inspired by that place where they had had the nude WI calendar idea, which had been filmed as Calendar Girls, and someone else said, well, they couldn't do another calendar, and that meant they had to up the ante in the nudity stakes, and someone else said, what did they have to do to up the nudity stakes? Recreate the Greek Olympic Games with no clothes on? And somehow everyone got carried away with this idea, and after a lot of ribbing, they decided to stage a recreation of the first Olympics. With no clothes on.

You can imagine the publicity this got, and how every paper sent people to Apdale to get photos of athletes practising for the Bare Games, which were a great success, and even when some local government body tried to ban them on the grounds of public indecency, the courts found they were justified on the grounds of historical accuracy, which only gave them added publicity, and a film company then decided to turn the story into a feature movie, which would be shot on location ...

The only thing was, they didn't think Apdale was really picturesque enough as a background, and decided to film it all at nearby Watherton.