Gary's Oui-Oui Car

What's a Christmas stage show for children in France got to do with the Great North Run?

Gary Thwaites		Noddy

The answer: Gary Thwaites runs a northeast firm called NE 3D that makes models and props for museums, theatre, TV, ads and commercials, etc. The customers usually want it yesterday, so life can get rather hectic.

The Casino de Paris (it's a theatre) was getting ready to stage a Noddy show for the kiddies. So there has to be a Noddy car - 9 feet long. But Noddy is known in France as "Oui-Oui" so perhaps it should be a Oui-Oui car.

But who could make it? Who better than Gary! Which meant that just when his training for the Great North Run should have been reaching its peak, he was working 16 hours a day to meet the deadline.

Gary and colleagues consulted computer files to see exactly what the car had to look like. They made templates, then a model, then a fibre glass mould before they could cast the fibre glass shell.

Lots more hard work was needed to finish the job - the whole job took 6 weeks - but it was done on time and it's now on stage in Paris.

Noddy's car on stage

Noddy's car isn't the strangest thing Gary has produced . Last year he had to construct a complete prison cell for a TV commercial.