The last week has been a really busy one, producing a video trailer for next year’s Lost & Found festival in Malta, hosted by Radio 1’s Annie Mac. The job came in pretty last minute, and with very little time for planning, last weekend me and James were on a plane leaving Manchester at 6.30am, heading to Malta! We met up at the airport in Malta with Oli from The Warehouse Project, and Wilf who’s a Manchester-based promoter who I think runs and produces a lot of the stuff for the festival.

Oli and Will were staying in a hotel in Sliema, whereas we carried on in the taxi for about another 40 minutes to Bugibba, where we checked into the Topaz Hotel. What with it being early afternoon, it was now incredibly hot, and since we had to wait for our room, we ended up sitting in the shade by the pool, eating ice lollies for lunch!

After unpacking, we took a taxi to the Cafe Del Mar at the top part of St Paul’s Bay so we could get some nice sunset shots of the coast, featuring one of the venues used for the festival. The views were stunning, and we spent an hour or so there before heading back to the hotel to get some food. We arrived back about 15 minutes before the buffet restaurant closed, and after paying to eat there, realised that we were left with pretty much the dregs of what they’d been serving that evening! We were really hungry because we’d not eaten much all day, so we just ended up piling random bits of what was left onto our plates!

We then met up with Wilf and Oli at their hotel at around 11pm, before taking a cab inland to a nightclub that belonged to one of the guys from Malta who was hosting us. Now, I’ve never been a nightclub person – in fact, I think I’ve only ever been to two, and they were both in Manchester, so it’s not something I’m used to! Luckily, since this was outdoors, there was a decent amount of space, and we were able to commandeer some sofas which meant I didn’t need to go near the dancing area! To be honest, we were both so knackered because we’d been up since stupid o’clock, and by the time we left just before 2am, and eventually got back to the hotel close to 3am, we were ready for sleep!

Sunday morning was an early start – we left before breakfast to head out and film at various locations across the island, to get all the additional shots needed on top of the stuff we’d be shooting with Annie the following day. It was an intense morning, and the temperature quickly rose, pretty much hitting 40 degrees by the time we got to some cliffs overlooking Ghajn Tuffieha Bay sometime around 1pm. Since we’d left the hotel so early, we’d not had a chance to drink anything, so here we were, in the hottest heat of the day when suddenly I was hit by dehydration. It was like nothing I’ve experienced before – I suddenly got very light headed, and couldn’t stand up any more, and collapsed down by a rock near an old tower at the edge of the cliff. Oli went back to the car park and managed to buy some bottles of Fanta, and I downed a litre of fizzy orange! Within about ten minutes I was back on my feet, but it was such a weird experience!

After grabbing lunch, we then moved onto the old walled city of Mdina, which was built in the 8th century BC(!), and filmed both there and at a nearby castle, before heading to Valetta to get shots of the island’s capital.

Annie then joined us that evening for a meal in a restaurant on the seafront – she’d been performing in Bristol on the Saturday night, before heading back to London to then fly out to Malta on Sunday afternoon.

Next morning was a really early start because we’d only got Annie until lunchtime, and we needed to film her at the multiple festival locations, and she also needed to use the time to actually make sure that all preparations were going to plan, so it was a bit manic!

I was so impressed with Annie – I mean, she was totally knackered because of the gig, and also she’s got a young child that she’d also been with on Sunday, and had to get back to London on Monday afternoon to be able to do her Radio 1 show that evening! But she was so professional, and I’m sure the last thing she wanted was to be bothered by us filming links, and following her every move, but her pieces-to-camera were faultless, and she was really working hard, and really nice and down-to-earth to talk to.

After she left us to catch her plane, we went back to Sliema and had lunch at restaurant that specialises in buffalo meat called Fratellila Bufalamalta, which was quite weird! I had a buffalo steak with fries and salad, and it kind of tasted like beef, but with a slightly grittier texture. If I had the choice, I think I’d rather have a regular steak!

We filmed a few more GVs before going back to Bugibba, where we ate out an Irish-bar restaurant, before the most amazing ice cream from a gelato shop off the main square!

We flew back to Manchester on Tuesday morning, and then spent the rest of the week putting the promo together: