Ballykissangel - The Ultimate Resource

The BBC paid for this trip, starting with a business class flight from Heathrow to Dublin. Unfortunately take-off was delayed, so I arrived in Dublin an hour or so late. No sooner had I arrived at the hotel than we were off again - Davy Sims (Producer) and Annlaug McKelvey (Broadcast Assistant) from BBC Online met me and we drove up to Bray. The studios are located about 40 minutes outside Dublin and the only clue to their whereabouts from the main road were a couple of little orange arrows with the letters bK (in the style of the Calvin Klein logo) on them. We weren't actually on the call sheet until the next day, but we had decided to try to get a few photos while they weren't filming.

Ardmore Studios is a bit of a strange mix. There's a lovely big house which serves as a production base, next to which is the very plain canteen, adorned with posters from feature films made there. The BallyK production base is in a little building opposite the main house, the walls of the corridors displaying stills from the series, including the photo used as a tribute to Birdy Sweeney. Niamh, one of the production assistants, took us round to the studio. "As you know, we're not using the Fitzgerald's set at the moment..." Damn. Ever since I'd discovered where the filming was taking place, I'd had my heart set on pulling a pint in Fitzgerald's even though I knew there was a chance the set wouldn't be up. "We're filming for the wedding episode at the moment..." Hang on a second! Whose wedding?!! In the UK we had only seen the first episode of the fifth series by that time and there were several likely contenders. Inside B-Stage, a huge marquee was set up, with a team of people busy creating flower arrangements and laying the table. It looked like an incredibly lavish affair... but whose was it?

The marquee filled two-thirds of the studio the other third was taken up by... Fitzgerald's. Yes!! From the outside, it's a load of plain wooden panels with things like 'PUB 19' written on them (right). We walked in and stood in darkness while Niamh went to get a spark to turn the lights on. I could make out the shape of the bar, the colour of the floor tiles, the rows of half-filled Guinness glasses on the bar. The second the lights came on was quite possibly the most surreal moment of my life - standing in the middle of a bar I knew like the back of my hand but had never visited before.

We were left alone to take photos or whatever we needed to do. In fact we just wandered around for a few minutes taking in the details. Old volumes of Encyclopedia Brittanica lay in strategic places around the bar, a betting slip beside the till and a picture of Assumpta now hangs over the main doorway. On the wall of the lounge area are old photos of Avoca - the cameras would never get close enough for you to see them but they're there all the same. Heaven knows how long it must take them to put this lot back together in the right places when they have to re-build the set from scratch. Through the door at the 'regulars' end of the bar are the toilets we've never seen. The toilets themselves don't exist of course, just the doors and signs above them. I walked behind the bar and subconsciously stepped over the spot where the cellar door should have been. I looked back. There was no cellar door... not on this set anyway. I believe that the third series used A-stage which has a pit used as the cellar.

The studio set feels slightly bigger than the real Fitzgerald's. I think there's more space between the front door and the bar and more space at the 'regular's end' of the bar too. Then there's the kitchen (right). As I ventured through the door behind the bar, I half expected Assumpta or Niamh to stick their head round the door and ask what I was doing there. The kitchen looks like it's just survived a fire - there's a very strong dark rim around the top of the walls. Dirt shows up much less on camera than in reality and I imagine once the lighting is set up for filming it would barely be seen. I've always wondered whether they actually bother putting anything in the larder, as it's never seen that much in the show... well, they do. On this occasion, the contents of the larder were: one jar of macaroni, one jar of tricolour pasta, one bottle of lemonade, two packets of cornflakes and a pack of NutriGrains (strawberry).

We started taking the photos for the web site and these included a couple of me pulling a pint at the bar. As it was the last day of filming, I didn't expect the pumps to still be connected, but I was proved wrong. I pulled a pint in Fitzgerald's. Okay it wasn't a very good pint - very foamy actually - but I did it on behalf of BallyK fans worldwide. Unfortunately we later discovered that the camera was set to a low shutter speed and those pictures didn't come out, but fortunately others did (left).

We left Ardmore still guessing whose wedding it was. Orla and Conor? Emma and Danny? Liam and Donal?!

Later that evening we went out for dinner and drinks in Dublin and on the way back to the hotel we passed Neary's (the pub where Stephen proposed to Dervla). Sad romantic that I am I just had to go in. We had been there a couple of minutes when who should walk through the door but Gary Whelan. He was one of those we had to get an interview with the next day.

Day Two - The Reception >>