This was "The Probe's" first venture in film making and was done in 2005. See the Paper section for more on "The Probe!" The movie grew from an idea that myself and Pete had to surprise a friend (Mark, our boss at the time), who was in hospital recovering from a major back operation. As we are all "Little Britain" fans, we thought it would be good fun to visit him in hospital, put Pete in a wheelchair and walk in as Lou and Andy.

His stay didn't last that long though, and before we could visit, he was discharged and sent home to recover. So we thought we could video a sketch at work and take it round to him to cheer him up but the one little idea grew into a few sketches and several characters from the hit show and before we knew it, we had a 12 minute mini show!

The work was finished a week before Red Nose Day 2005 here in the UK and we hit upon the idea that maybe, if we package it up decently enough, we could sell it at our workplace and raise money for Comic Relief at the same time. I set to work on a photo gallery section set to music from Ozone, a Romanian pop band who's fame increased when a guy named Gary Brolsma did the Numa Numa video and a 'comedy of errors' section full of out-takes all linked by an animated menu to give a running time of 25 minutes.

The amount of work that generated was seriously under-estimated! Posters were designed to advertise it along with a mock-up of the DVD case and the receptionists had the unenviable task of logging down all the names and money being paid ready for the launch a week later.

We honestly thought that maybe 20-25 copies could be sold and we were selling it for £5 and giving £4 to Comic Relief. Covering the cost of the blank DVD, red cases and printing our own DVD's and case inlay's on an Epson printer we thought we could raise maybe £100 for charity on the back of a simple idea to cheer up a friend.

Imagine our delight (and horror) as we received the 143rd order! We were working flat out just to duplicate the discs and print the artwork so it would be ready. I had a few days off just before Red Nose day 2005 and it was spent duplicating and printing non stop, into the early hours. The company we work for added 20% to any money raised for the event so we donated nearly £700 and started getting recognised in the street because staff were lending their copies to friends and relatives.

As Red Nose day is every 2 years we had intended to satisfy the 'fans' this year (2007) who asked when the next one was out. Due to a flu epidemic though, we never made it but we do have lots of new ideas and sketches which have already been scripted so watch this space in the Autumn for "Children in Need"

At the moment, just the windows media version is online. Quicktime coming soon.

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