Ever the epitome of professional-ness when interviewing, the Fiesta Fringe team rarely make mistakes, but it is here that we hold up our hands and confess to you all about the time we forgot to put the battery in the camera, and were only able to record the audio of one of our brilliant pilots.
We drove out to Portishead on a Sunny evening in April to meet Dave Groombridge, as we had been reliably informed that he was the person to talk to regarding the commercial side of ballooning, having previously run Go Ballooning (long before it famously went bust this year) and holding several high profile sponsorship contracts.
Still relatively young compared to his peers, Dave has achieved a significant amount in a short space of time, so we went to quiz him about how he got involved and what he is up to now. But it wasn’t until we settled down in his living room after a drink and a biscuit that Dan discovered that he had forgotten to take the battery out of the charger and it was in fact back at home, which was a good 40 minutes drive away! Needless to say we were embarrassed, but Dave, being a great sport, humoured us and we carried on with Louis recording the sound.
Where to start with Dave? He got into ballooning at a young age and managed to score a sponsor very quickly, enabling him the opportunity to fly as much as he wanted, gaining experience and learning with some great pilots. He has been involved in some great publicity stunts over the years, including flying one of the balloons that enabled a TV presenter to ‘tight-rope walk’ from one to another balloon and break a world record, and most impressively, toured with Take That on their circus tour, operating the balloon that opened their set every night. The tour was seen by thousands, and on occasion had to be operated in compromising conditions, but the show always went ahead.
We also talked to Dave about how he managed to fit ballooning in with such a young family, as his baby daughter and wife joined us toward the end. He explained that it was now something they all enjoyed together, and he was looking forward to taking them all on his daughter’s first flight.
Fortunately we also managed to catch up with Dave, albeit briefly, at the Bristol Balloon Fiesta and will be sharing the footage with you in the documentary, as well as putting together a podcast of the bits we don’t use, as the interview will definitely be of interest to a few of you who are looking into how to gaining sponsorship…
In the meantime, here is a picture of Louis stood in front of Dave’s balloon.
(Take That picture courtesy of The Independent’s website)
Above Bristol 