Last week I got a phone call from Chang Hung, who is a producer on The Edge’s afternoon show, with Guy Williams, Sharyn Casey, and Clint Roberts.
At first, I thought I’d won something, but then I remembered that in order to win things, you actually have to enter competitions, and given that I haven’t listened to The Edge for about 10 years, it was unlikely that I’d entered anything!
Turns out they had heard I make costumes, and wanted me to make a novelty hat for the winner of their competition to find ‘the biggest head in NZ’.
They wanted a fairly standard baseball cap, with some extras…..
· The cap cut to fit a 65cm head – with really obvious extensions – make it look rough
· Logo on the front that says BIGGEST HEAD IN NZ
· Beer/cup holder on one side and a working phone charger on the other
· Working fan on the peak of the cap
· Loads of lights
So of course I took the job. Weird requests are my lifeblood. I love making things that are a challenge, particularly if they’re strange.
After scouring the dollar stores at Lynmall, I had collected the required materials and got to work.
I had to do some serious minor-electronics to get the fan to work, as the only one I’d been able to find was a mini-desk fan, rather than a handheld one, so I had to stash the battery pack in the brim of the cap, and put the switch in the top.
In order to keep it looking ‘thrown together’ (one of their main requests was to keep it looking a bit rough, to fit with the joking nature of the competition) I made the initial cap quite small. 65cm is a big head, but most baseball caps would likely fit without the extensions they wanted, so by starting with a smaller cap, the side panels would have more of an effect.
The lights were easy – a small string of battery-operated seed lights stitched around the peak, and woven through the webbing-extensions on the sides, with the battery pack in the brim, and the switch inside the top. There’s also one of those chargeable battery-packs in a pocket on the side, for the phone charger to plug into, and the cupholder was tacked on the other side to balance the weight.
When I called Chang to ask where to deliver the hat, he asked if I could come into the studio to present it to the winner, and have a bit of a chat on air! Of course I said yes, because that’s some pretty sweet free promotion for my business, but it was still a bit terrifying. Thankfully the whole crew were awesome, and really put me at ease! Normally I swear like a sailor, so I tried not to say much in case I got them into trouble with the BSA, because then they’d never hire me again. Haha
You can listen to me on their podcast (Our segment starts at 20:55)
Hopefully this is the start of a good thing with The Edge, as they all seemed pretty keen to have me back on board for promos in the near future!