Behind the Scenes at The BEST Midlands Tour Guide

What is the BEST Midlands Tour Guide? How do I do the tour? When will the tour be live? What makes it the BEST?

ALL of these questions, and more, will be answered… But first, strap in folks, we’re going down the rabbit hole. 

If you’re anything like me, you bloody love a good rabbit hole, second-cousin-twice-removed to the familiar Tangent (a hit-and-miss character sometimes referred to as Windbag). 

See what an excellent tangent that was?

Now, back to the rabbit hole…

Last time we introduced you to The BOOMTOWN Story Tour, a concept that reimagines tours, exploration, and adventure. 

But what kind of a tour is this? 

Firstly, it’s prudent to distinguish between “Going on a tour” and “Going on tour.” The latter, while an excellent Hollywood narrative technique, guaranteeing hijinks and calamity at every turn, is only fun provided you have a tattoo removal specialist, access to a desert (plus a spade in the boot), a lawyer on speed dial, and bribe money. 

On the other hand, going on a tour is a veritable mixed bag. You might find yourself chasing down an umbrella-wielding chatterbox as you clamber over the Acropolis, or on a self-tour reading lame-ass plaques in a room full of vases painted with what some might describe as porn. It turns out that not even porn is exempt from needing a bit of glitter and a kiff story. 

Good tour guides are everything. On our mission to create a novel way to explore the Midlands and experience great stories, we’ve gone down our own rabbit hole of podcasts, audiobooks, and old-school radio shows for inspiration.  

Enter The Best Midlands Tour Guide, an episodic radio-style show (accessed via QR code) at each mural. 

For this to succeed we obviously need the BEST tour guides around. And that’s when we decided we actually wanted the worst. Stay with me rabbit-holers. 

What’s the deal with the BEST? 

“Best coffee in town…” 

“Best pizza…”

“Best toilets…” 

If you’re lured by the promise of “the best” you’ll be lucky if what you end up with is actually the cheapest. I don’t trust technology that tells me it’s smart (I’m looking at you fridge and washing machine) or anything that tells me it’s the best (I’m looking at you too Tina Turner)… 

A few years back, we were absolutely tickled when a sign for ”BEST Hilton Supermarket” appeared. The sign was certainly not “BEST”, nor was the grammar… The supermarket itself? Well, that’s a matter of opinion. 

To take a leaf out of Ace of Base’s book, “We saw the sign, and it opened up our eyes”. 

How about “The BEST Midlands Tour Guide”? Things escalated suitably from there.  

Picture a Hadeda and a Dassie. The Hadeda is a washed-out al fresco performer whose gigs dried up a while ago. When he started busking he couldn’t find a location that would have him because of noise complaints. He met his best friend the Dassie, while car guarding, and the Hadeda coaxed him into joining his BEST Midlands Tour Guide venture. Unfortunately, they’re illegal tour guides, but you can’t stand in the way of a hustler. That’s how they ended up commandeering a massive tour bus packed with animals and taking it around the Midlands on a once-in-a-lifetime trip. 

On the tour, you’ll meet the Praying Mantis (recently widowed and on a girls gone wild weekend), the Crocodile an expert in Onomastics (no judgment for Googling Onomastics), an annoying vervet monkey, and a whole menagerie of other characters that we’ve cooked up and will continue to cook up. 

I should also probably tell you about Brad. Brad is an eagle and proud owner of Eagle Tours (est. 1994) in Nottingham Road (a legal tour operator) and he is not happy about the Hadeda and the Dassie’s flagrant disregard for the rules. Not happy at all. 

The raddest thing is having the freedom to talk about things through the eyes of animals… Magical Realism really is a handy tool that way. If you missed the section on Latin American literature I’ve written a quick blurb in the style of CHATGPT.

Thank you for your question Jaqui. Wow, I’m surprised you finally using me, my tab has been open for so long on your browser. Please note how I’ve made you look good by inadvertently telling everyone that you don’t use me. Magical Realism is a narrative strategy or genre where fantastical or mythical elements are brought into the everyday. As a term it was first coined in Latin America in the 1940s but it’s popular across Africa and is a feature of postcolonial writing.

Magical Realism fits into our world because we strive to bring everyday magic to life by creating magical places out of nothing through stories and storytelling. 

Without the right voices, we’d be up Faeces Ravine without a Tugboat. Finding the right voices has been integral and we’re lucky to have a growing network of amazing voice artists, musicians, and enthusiasts to help us with this madcap vision. Luke Falconer and Andy Hepburn (no relation to Audrey or Katherine sadly) are the Hadeda and the Dassie. Khuba Ikaneng is the Crocodile, Bianca Pieters plays a whole host of vibrant characters, and Charles Webster is embracing his inner Brad. 

We’re also doing everything we can to figure out attention-span and procrastination barriers. That’s why we figure a range of voices is infinitely more excellent than having me read The Boringest History of the Midlands as you drive around looking for murals. 

I’ve watched table reads in behind-the-scenes features so I was expecting a lot of crying and big reactions from the cast. Sadly, they were too ensconced in the coffee and bran muffins, and also (spoiler alert) none of the characters are written off in the first season because this isn’t Game of Thrones. What I will say is that for my directorial table read debut, it was definitely a success. The muffins were anti-dry, there were only a few typos in the script, and we could jump to a recording session to lock everything down. I’ve heard (the Internet) that some productions have more than one table read, so we’re definitely ahead of the game. 

On Sunday the 20th October it was obviously raining in Hilton, and I was surprised when everyone arrived at the recording studio with actual energy. The second big win was fitting six of us in the recording studio. I needed a condenser for my microphone, because it was popping like it was hot, and everyone laughed when I put it behind my microphone rather than in front of it.  I like to call that an ice-breaker. 

Six performers are a lot but here are some of the ideas that we came up in between takes. 

• BEST Midlands Christmas Album that morphed into a full show/review
• A BEST Midlands Tour Guide Album
• Becoming children’s entertainers
• PUPPETS!!!
• Writing an African Christmas Story
• How to make Turkish/Greek Delight
• Acrylic fingernails
• Will Charles Webster agree to partake in this lunacy
• Can Bianca permanently talk like Pam Mantis

Amazingly, we recorded all of the tracks in two and a half hours and this also included lunch, a lot of tangents, and a buffet of other impromptu nonsense…

“What goes on on tour stays on tour!” (And yes, we did need the spade.)

Collaboration is perfection and magic when it works. Jackal & Hide is constantly amazed that we’ve found artists, voices, and musicians to agree to work with us to bring this vision to life. Right on our doorstep. The only thing we need now is support. 

Support us by doing the tour when we launch the test run mid-November.

The tour “starts” at Howick Falls or Nottingham Road (there will be a “starting point” in Hilton in due course), and then work your way through the Midlands. There is no right direction and each episode stands alone. The tour is FREE and self-guided and you’ll need to scan QR codes to access the audio. You’ll also need headphones (noise-cancelling are best) or a speaker to listen to the audio. The name of the game is fewer distractions hence noise-cancelling. 

When will the tour be live?

By mid-November, the first cut of the recordings will be ready. You are then invited to experience the tour and give feedback so we can work on creating the BEST user experience possible. We’ll include a link to a feedback form so that you can talk to the manager (for a limited time only) and let us know how we can improve. We’ll then add the final flourishes and sound effects so that the BEST VERSION of the BEST Midlands Tour Guide Tour can be unleashed. POW! 

At the moment The BEST Midlands Tour Guide tour is

• Howick Falls wall painted and designed by Jono Hornby
• Nottingham Road wall painted by Lelo Mncwango and designed by Jono Hornby
• Howick Bus Stop painted and designed by Keagan Dunn
• Tweedies Bus Stop painted and designed by Thato Sbk
• Lion’s River Bus Stop painted and designed by Thato Sbk
• Lion’s River Bus Stop painted and designed by Keagan Dunn
• Balgowan Bus Stop painted and designed by Keagan Dunn

Coming Soon

• Howick Central Park
• Tweedie Junction
• Hilton

Watch this space, there’s more to come. And in the next Behind the Scenes episode we’ll introduce you to Shine Mpophomeni and see what the Storyhunter has discovered on his travels. And at last, you’ll learn who the portraits under the underpass are.