When you need to organise an elaborate joke to fool your friends, you can always choose April 1st each year to give the game away, but where do you get the support to see through the prank in a convincing manner? “GameFriends”!

You need to collect dependable GameFriends, the type of friends who will role play the joke convincingly and keep everything secret in the run up to the occasion. For all those at the planning stage, you can use a search engine or randomly type in things like www.prankstersunlimited.com or www.playajoke.co.uk but unlike most things, such well organised joke-events have slipped the internet to date and have not been incorporated into one turn-key web sites.

I can see the opening for such a web site and as there are so many television programmes where friends (and strangers) are ‘set-up’ on the street or at their place of work, the popularity of this form of ‘joke’ is booming.

The ‘laugh’ can echo into the wider public eye as well. Television is ever hungry for fun ‘footage’ that shows both people being foolish and people creating ‘fools’. All you need is a clearance agreement from all captured on your cam. and your video film could end up having millions of viewers.

Let’s face it folks, we are now in a new World set apart from the private and usually secretive one that has existed thus far. There are official (spy) cameras on most city streets helping the police and security people to watch over our little brother movements and listen in to our conversations. Though all this has been installed to help us ‘get along together’, these films cab also be sold to television and thus provide income at the same time as home entertainment, for I have seen on television, actual police film of suspects being interviewed and security footage taken in shopping centres of thieves and passers-by.

Many governing bodies are in favour of exposing ‘reality’, often above ‘fiction’, and many producers love to blur the line between fact and fiction. In such a new Big Brother climate, it is becoming easier and maybe more acceptable to play around, blur or intentionally obscure this line so the opportunities for jesters and fraudsters are widening.

Celebrate “Play a Joke on a Friend Week” carefully and maybe think of the profits! If you are planning your next jibe, your next role tease or fun trick, make sure that you:

Have fully charged your CAM batteries
Shoot your film in a public place where possible
Obtain location and individual clearances if thinking of selling the footage
Have reliable friends and associates to support you.

We’ve played the occasional joke on friends and have also created some unusual birthday celebrations here at ‘HoBB Real’, so if you are on the look out for fun ideas, you are naturally welcome to contact us.

And have a look for adverts in magazines under commercial wind-ups (NOT asset stripping!), event organisers and even a few interactive live phone line services. Remember that you’ll need some friendly ‘strangers’ in some circumstances – naturally ones that cannot be recognised by your friends !

( Note: “Play a Joke on a Friend Week” is not sponsored by any film company or TV distribution company or their agents)

Waves ~~~~~~~~~ <+))))))))>< ~~~ Grant

Treat yourself to a secret present making session. Forget the known and predictable, and take the time to create an individual gift in secret – we do at the HoBB!

Have you noticed an increase in the ‘habit’ of publishing ‘Want Lists’? These lists might be fine when reserved for Weddings and letters to Santa Claus but now they get published online and whole families exchange lists year round.

I love creating and giving surprises at all times but especially on non-birthdays. Sadly, the commercial world has latched onto every calendar event and now creates great gift-expectations. The pressure to have what is produced and for the reason it is produced is as manufactured as the products themselves.

I saw some programme suggesting that this pressure was causing a serious problem termed ‘Lifestyle Anxiety’ . So serious is it becoming that it may lead to voluntary advertising controls that forbid hitting susceptible markets like children with endless toy adverts.

Advertisers are great at pulling the strings but we should not be creating puppets of our young or ourselves. If we can get away from ‘expecting’ presents through giving presents at unexpected times and in unexpected ways we’ll all be far more flexible and at ease.

The two presents (pictured above) were way off the scale of ‘usual’. Both were created here at the HoBB on secret present making missions. One is a piece of Garden Sculpt made from stones collected in the recipients garden and the other was innocently placed on a birthday girls breakfast table – the contents of the jar were hand made and tasted wonderful but also the ‘own brand’ one-off home produce label held many a personalised birthday wish!

To make a secret present you need a secret location tucked away in the hills – contact us, we just might know of one.

~~~~~~~~~~ <+))))))))>< ~~~ waves from Grant