Just a short note before we start looking at pictures, to give you the background to how this photo shoot came about. At Billing last year two Journalists came to the Outlaws and Drivers Club stand and asked loads of questions about all the cars. They took photos and notes about most of the cars and said they would include some in Total Vauxhall and Practical Classics in the Billing show report. Sure enough we got quite a good mention and some of the cars were pictured including DHR.

Out of the blue one day I get an e-mail from Dougie Rankin saying he would like to do a feature on DHR for Total Vauxhall. This had to be a wind-up by the boys! I then notice his e-mail address was totalvauxhall so was very careful how I phrased my reply. I was still convinced the boys had put someone up to it and were waiting to have a good laugh at my expense. When he then got Marc Stretton to contact me about setting it up, I still wasn't fully convinced, but it seemed more genuine by the day. Marc was the journalist and he said we would be joined by Matthew Barnes who was the photographer. It was real! This wasn't a joke!

They asked me to find a 'location', (as we celebrities like to call it), and Paul said we could use his Mum's farm, which has the old World War II American air force runway on it. Brilliant.

So on the 16th of September 2008 they both arrived at my house at 9:30 and came in for a chat. DHR had been cleaned to within an inch of her life the night before. I hadn't a clue what we were going to do or how things worked, but we sat in the kitchen chatting about DHR and Viva's in general. After I mentioned that I had half a Viva in the garage they insisted on seeing the garage before we left. I wasn't expecting this and the garage was a right mess. Still they had a laugh and took some pictures in there.

Up at the farm Matthew said he couldn't use the airfield because DHR was to white and the sky that day was the same colour. He said all people would see was a red stripe in the pictures. He like the old 300 year old barn at the front of the farm so he settled on there. He did say that at the end of the day we would take moving shots down the runway. Brilliant! Believe it or not when we opened the old barn doors there were about seven old cars in there. An old Lister Jag, a Morris Traveler, an Alfa Giulia 101, an unusual Merc estate and some others I can't remember. They were in the element. Marc in particular kept going back in to have a look. I found out later that a bloke who owns a garage owns them and stores them there.

The photos took six hours to do! Six hours! God knows how many pictures he took but it seemed like a million. While Marc and I stood around waiting for Matthew to take the pictures Marc asked me questions about DHR. They did warn me it would take all day but I thought they were exaggerating. They weren't. At one point DHR had five or six great big flash lamps pointing at her and I stood just out of 'shot' holding one and having to move it a fraction of an inch to get the right light.

My favorite bit was at the end of the day. Matthew unloaded his car, a Focus estate I think, and opened the back up. He then hooked the seatbelt round him and took the pictures while Marc drove him at speed up and down the runway, with me a few inches from his bumper. He was waving at me to get closer and to which side he wanted me to go. It was brilliant. All the time I had a big flash light in the passenger footwell going off and blinding me every time he took a picture.

At the end of the day I thanked them both and said that it had been a real insight. They didn't know when the article would go out as they don't decide that sort of thing. Matthew said that he might be able to send me some of the pictures if it was okay with Total Vauxhall, but he wouldn't be allowed to send them until it had been published. Good as his word Matthew has sent me around 35 pictures, which okay are slightly better than mine.

Anyway here are MY photos of the day because the article was in April 2009's edition of Total Vauxhall. Matthews pictures aren't on my site yet as I haven't asked permission from Dougie at Total Vauxhall. I'm seeing him in May on the VBOA International Rally and if he says it's okay I'll add them here and a scanned copy of the article.

I'd like to say here a big, big thank you to Marc and Matthew and Dougie at Total Vauxhall for the experience, it was great.