Hashim joined the Red Bull Reporter Team at head office for the Red Bull Rivals Press Day, where he met with Matt Littler and Darren Jeffries and interviewed them on the challenges they have had to endure to become Red Bull Rivals Champion 2009! Check out his report to hear what the former Hollyoaks stars had to say...
Cascading down cliffs, bumbling across motorcycle obstacles, literally leaping across town and just flopping into water in homemade contraptions, with a cheeky grin. This autumn, former Hollyoaks stars Matt Littler and Darren Jeffries go against each other to see who can emerge victorious in extreme sports like cliff-diving, free-running and a bit of the legendary flugtag – all the while flexing their powers of charm on the celebrity judges – in the new T4 show Red Bull Rivals. In each episode the two flap and flounder as they prepare for the sport, psych themselves up, properly compete and take the celebrity judge out on a date, just for that added bit of competition. And, predictably, there’s a bit more that unexpectedly crops up along the way.
To find out more, I went to the source and had a chat with Matt and Darren at Red Bull HQ.
HH: So, what possessed you to sign up for Red Bull Rivals?
M: Why wouldn’t we sign up for it!
D: We’ve got a really silly part of our brain that finds it hard to turn down any challenge there is, and it wasn’t an offer we could really walk away from. Five different countries in the space of three months doing five amazing events, five extreme sports that we’ve never taken part in before. It’s just something that you have to do. M: I mean, we were on a five-week long stag do basically! For me, and for Daz, it was just something we couldn’t turn down. Cos then you’re going to have to watch someone else have the fun instead!
HH: It’s been a while since I’ve seen you two in Hollyoaks, but to still see you two together on the screen’s great.
D: Yeah, that’s another thing. It’s allowed us to keep on working together. And you can’t complain when you’re working with your mates! Working with your mates is the best thing in the world, so to get to go away and travel and go on this amazing journey together… it’s been great.
HH: And so, how hard did you think the challenges would be?
M: We didn’t assume it would be easy at any point; otherwise it wouldn’t have been worth doing!
D: And that’s the thing, I’ve got a new respect for all the events now. Doing free-running, obviously on the TV it’s impressive and part of you thinks “I could do that!” whereas when you’re actually there and it’s just you and the concrete and nothing else, it’s pretty scary stuff.
HH: Were there any embarrassing accidents?
D: Yeah, there was quite a generous faceplant! In the actual event I thought I would show off doing a forward flip onto a mat. I achieved the forward flip mid-air, but instead of landing on my feet I landed on my head!
HH: Matt, your wrist too!
M: Yeah, I wish I could say it had been a spectacular crash, but it was a bit pathetic. It was kind of like “Ah, I’ve broken my wrist in three places”.
D: It was more like a stumble than a crash! He stumbled off the bike. It always happens that on the smallest accidents, you get the worst injuries.
HH: And your big jump off at the end of Romaniacs, that was incredible!
D: Yeah, that was planned. I didn’t tell anyone, I just thought that if I was going to end it I was going to end it in style. And, y’know, that fact that I ended up on my back, well…
HH: So what challenge were you most looking forward to?
D: I think the first challenge was really cool because we’d both never ridden a bike before. So the fact that we were getting trained by the likes of Cyril Dupres and Dougie Lampkin was just great! They were both so patient and gave us some great advice when it came to the actual event, that was pretty cool. But I think for the future, I’m looking forward to cliff-diving because that’s going to be an amazing experience. And I’m looking forward to the flugtag event because it’s not as intense as the others, there’s not a lot of training involved and it’s just a lot more fun! That’ll be like a holiday compared to the rest!
HH: Will you be making the actual flugtags yourselves?
M: We’ve been involved in making them, just in Brighton two days ago. There’s a guy who’s been doing the construction and we’ve been there the whole time saying how we want them to look like.
HH: Yeah, it looks like it’s going to be incredible!
M: Absolutely. Out of all the events, flugtag’s the event where, sort of, anything goes! It’s not about skill, it’s about brains really and what you’re doing. I think that’s going to be one of the most interesting episodes.
HH: So how did you find working with the athletes?
M: They’re all really super down-to-earth, super helpful and, as a World Champion, you think that this guy’s going to act like one but he’s doesn’t.
D: And at the same it’s really awe-inspiring because you’ll be chatting away to them like with a guy you’ve known for years. And yeah, as Matt said, they’re just so down-to-earth. One of them would just jump on a bike or dive off a board and you would be like ‘Wow’. These people know exactly what they’re doing. We’ve been taught by the best in the business, so that’s been valuable.
HH: Have there been any backhanded tactics so far?
D: I think Matt hiring Warren [insert Warren’s character name here] to replace him in Romaniacs and free-running! Cos Warren’s a good mate of ours and he is a top bloke – but he is Action Man. If he’s Action Man then I’m Barbie.
M: No, I think that you’re a good Ken!
D: I was Ken, a bit poncy! So that was a great tactic by Matt to get someone better than him to replace him. But, y’know, we’re very good sportsmen and we haven’t been taking the competitive side too seriously. We are, obviously, competing against each other but we’re still mates and we feel lucky to be in this position so we’re just enjoying it.
HH: You could definitely see the disappointment on your face after Romaniacs!
D: Yeah, there’s an element of disappointment cos we are putting sweat and blood into these exercises and it’s a kind of strange feeling cos you are sad that you’ve lost but at the same time the sense of achievement is unbelievable.
HH: It was actually really impressive when you went and did Romaniacs.
D: To actually look back on the track, and especially seeing the episode, I still can’t believe I did it.
M: Hey, when you went back down the track you could just see this big trail of destruction, and petrol all over the place! I’m just quite sad that I’ll never be able to have a crack at it.
D: That’s quite sad, I’ve never thought about it that way before.
HH: How was working with Basshunter?
D: Yeah, we went out to Sweden with Basshunter for free-running, and he was a great guy. We’ve been really lucky so far with the celebrity guests because the people that have been chosen – like Kara Tointon – have all been so up for it and so involved, and we just have a great laugh.
HH: Perhaps a bit more of a wacky and random celebrity judge?
M: Well he’s good value and people like him so, he’s great.
D: Very random guy, he comes out with some great lines. And he likes his ladies!
HH: Oh, yeah, in the Now You’re Gone video, that girl’s brilliant.
D: Is she a pornstar?
HH: That’s what it says on Wikipedia!
D: Yeah, it’s the same girl on all the videos, she’s absolutely beautiful!
HH: How did you guys get on during training?
M: We’ve been friends so long that we’ve always gotten on, and as far as how we got on during the training, there was just a couple of moments where it was all a bit overwhelming. But we’ve never sort of had each other or anything.
Q: So the individual aspect to the training is more the focus?
D: Yeah, we learn from each other. And what is pretty mad is that we’re learning all these events in the space of three days. The pros have been doing it all their lives, the ones who are new to it have only been doing it for about two months whereas we’re doing for three days, then we’re taking part [in the challenge]. So it’s such a lot to take in, and because we’re so focused during training there’s no time for arguing or mucking about, we just get on with it.
M: What I found interesting about the training was that these pro’s have been doing it all their lives; they’ve been doing it for so long that from when they first started, they’ve forgotten the things they were afraid of, things that may have held them back a little bit. So they don’t know how to teach us to get around those things! I think that’s something we need to bear in mind. D: We are literally in at the deep end. But we enjoy that; we revel in it.
HH: You can definitely tell when you see the programme, and the fact that it’s funny makes it all the more better. How was it working with Kara?
M: She’s great; she’d become part of the team! When she was leaving we were all like “Oh, if it helps I was slightly enamored by her!”
HH: And the Romanian band in your date with her, what was that all about?!
D: Oh, don’t ask. The Romanian dancing aspect to the show was actually scarier than the Romaniacs event. It’s just all these old women who were so obsessed with the traditional side to the dancing, which is fair enough, but they didn’t really understand that we’d never done it before! And this old woman was getting so annoyed that we weren’t getting the dancing right. She did genuinely scare me. And I think Kara was scared, also, and I think that’s why I lost the date! She walked away from it pretty overwhelmed.
HH: It was still very impressive, good on you!
D: Yeah, I pulled out all the stops…
HH: What about yours, Matt?
M: Daz tried really hard on his, but mine just went wrong. I thought [Warren] was going to come out in a Dracula outfit, but instead it was the hotdog outfit to scare us.
HH: He’s only good at some things, that guy!
D: Yeah, good at motorbiking, but bad at dressing up.
HH: Is this show something you guys can see yourselves doing again?
M: Yeah, definitely! D: This show’s perfect for Matt and myself because we love experiencing new things. And the fact that we’re going to countries that we’ve never been to before, we’re taking part in sports that we’ve never attempted before; it’s just a great, great show to be working on.
HH: Will you be taking on any of these sports after the show?
M: Yeah, motorbiking, I’ll be carrying on with that. And with the mountain biking, you can just put your bikes in the back of a car and just go and do it.
D: The free-running’s great as well because you can just be walking down a street with a bit of shopping and just decide to vault a wall. Yeah, it’s quite easy to do that in day-to-day life.
Catch Red Bull Rivals at 1pm on T4 from Saturday 10th October
Hashim Ul-Hassan
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