WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

1
00:00:00.130 --> 00:00:01.830
- It's often quicker and easier

2
00:00:01.830 --> 00:00:04.220
to buy something new
rather than secondhand,

3
00:00:04.220 --> 00:00:05.860
especially if you're part of a business.

4
00:00:05.860 --> 00:00:07.640
New things can be bought easily online,

5
00:00:07.640 --> 00:00:09.810
usually from a company you've
already got a relationship with,

6
00:00:09.810 --> 00:00:12.020
invoiced for automatically,
and handled

7
00:00:12.020 --> 00:00:14.860
without really any thought
or management required.

8
00:00:14.860 --> 00:00:16.360
And then once your project's finished,

9
00:00:16.360 --> 00:00:20.580
particularly for a short term industry
like media or fashion, say,

10
00:00:20.580 --> 00:00:23.830
you can just throw the thing
out, 'cause the job's done.

11
00:00:23.830 --> 00:00:24.898
Related to that...

12
00:00:24.898 --> 00:00:28.770
there's a metres-high mountain of
mannequins in the Midlands.

13
00:00:28.770 --> 00:00:32.340
- A lot of of them I have purchased,
and have been in my collection for hire,

14
00:00:32.340 --> 00:00:36.720
but a lot of them have come along
because they were destined for landfill.

15
00:00:36.720 --> 00:00:39.857
Somebody got in touch with me,
a friend from a long time ago, and said,

16
00:00:39.857 --> 00:00:41.940
"I see you're hiring mannequins.

17
00:00:41.940 --> 00:00:44.520
"We've got some that are going
to be thrown into the bin.

18
00:00:44.520 --> 00:00:45.444
"Would you be interested?"

19
00:00:45.444 --> 00:00:48.970
So I said, "Well, yeah,
of course, how many?"

20
00:00:48.970 --> 00:00:51.430
He says, "Oh, about 100."

21
00:00:51.430 --> 00:00:54.140
And then over a period
of about four months,

22
00:00:54.140 --> 00:00:57.820
25,000 of them turned up
from all over Europe

23
00:00:57.820 --> 00:01:01.052
because people had heard
about this mad woman in Lincolnshire

24
00:01:01.052 --> 00:01:04.140
who will rehome unwanted dummies.

25
00:01:04.140 --> 00:01:07.180
There's a deliberate misspelling
for the company name,

26
00:01:07.180 --> 00:01:11.230
"manna", food from heaven,
and "kin", kindred spirit,

27
00:01:11.230 --> 00:01:15.330
because it was almost gifted to me
during a time when really I had nothing.

28
00:01:15.330 --> 00:01:17.540
It was just perfect.
Absolutely perfect name.

29
00:01:17.540 --> 00:01:20.450
Where we are right now,
this is the spray bay.

30
00:01:20.450 --> 00:01:22.730
When they go out on hire,
they look lovely, brand new.

31
00:01:22.730 --> 00:01:28.060
They come back in with chips,
broken bits, dirt all over them.

32
00:01:28.060 --> 00:01:30.580
So they're all cleaned up,
put on these rails.

33
00:01:30.580 --> 00:01:34.050
And then they're wheeled into
the front of the spray bay,

34
00:01:34.050 --> 00:01:36.130
where they receive a new coat of paint.

35
00:01:36.130 --> 00:01:39.730
- Also for £50 here, you can have a
"drive-through mannequin heist",

36
00:01:39.730 --> 00:01:41.021
where you get 15 minutes

37
00:01:41.021 --> 00:01:43.663
to fit as many mannequins and
mannequin parts as you can

38
00:01:43.663 --> 00:01:46.490
into the back of your car.
I did consider doing that,

39
00:01:46.490 --> 00:01:50.110
but... I don't need any mannequins.

40
00:01:50.110 --> 00:01:52.260
- Normally we would have open days

41
00:01:52.260 --> 00:01:56.160
where people can come and go through
and collect bits and pieces.

42
00:01:56.160 --> 00:02:00.310
What the whole COVID situation
has enabled me to do was, okay,

43
00:02:00.310 --> 00:02:02.450
instead of people just coming
in and wandering around,

44
00:02:02.450 --> 00:02:05.690
and you could potentially have quite a lot
of people doing that at any one time,

45
00:02:05.690 --> 00:02:09.383
I set up a booking system so that
people can book in and pay

46
00:02:09.383 --> 00:02:14.370
and then they drive through and then
they stop at "mannequin mountain".

47
00:02:14.370 --> 00:02:18.320
And then I would get on a loud
speaker, and have a timer.

48
00:02:18.320 --> 00:02:20.530
And then it's a case of,
"you've got 15 minutes

49
00:02:20.530 --> 00:02:23.150
"to fill up the back of
your car with body parts!"

50
00:02:23.150 --> 00:02:23.983
It's hilarious.

51
00:02:23.983 --> 00:02:27.060
So some people know what a
supermarket sweep is, right?

52
00:02:27.060 --> 00:02:30.160
And they come in and [roaring]
and they're all filling up quick.

53
00:02:30.160 --> 00:02:33.110
And then other times you've got people,
they've parked their car one end,

54
00:02:33.110 --> 00:02:35.300
but they walk all the way up
to the other end

55
00:02:35.300 --> 00:02:37.660
to collect a pair of legs and
then come all the way back.

56
00:02:37.660 --> 00:02:41.400
And I'm thinking, you're going
to run out of time. [laughs]

57
00:02:41.400 --> 00:02:43.120
So hands are a really interesting one

58
00:02:43.120 --> 00:02:46.990
because if I'm putting together some
mannequins from that mountain,

59
00:02:46.990 --> 00:02:50.200
I need to make sure that
if I've got 10 of something,

60
00:02:50.200 --> 00:02:53.070
that I've got 10 pairs
of hands to go with that,

61
00:02:53.070 --> 00:02:55.120
'cause it needs to be a set.

62
00:02:55.120 --> 00:02:56.910
So we did have someone
who turned up once

63
00:02:56.910 --> 00:02:58.860
and literally filled up the
back of their car with hands,

64
00:02:58.860 --> 00:03:00.606
and I'm like, [whimpering],

65
00:03:00.606 --> 00:03:01.439
[laughs]

66
00:03:01.439 --> 00:03:05.860
I'm sort-of having a freak out for
future putting-mannequins-together.

67
00:03:05.860 --> 00:03:07.800
- I'll be honest, even in daylight,

68
00:03:07.800 --> 00:03:09.520
this place feels a little creepy.

69
00:03:09.520 --> 00:03:11.200
There is something unsettling

70
00:03:11.200 --> 00:03:15.700
about being surrounded by
not-quite-human figures in every direction.

71
00:03:15.700 --> 00:03:18.210
Fortunately, the folks here
do understand that,

72
00:03:18.210 --> 00:03:19.890
particularly around Halloween.

73
00:03:19.890 --> 00:03:22.740
- At Halloween, I open up the yard

74
00:03:22.740 --> 00:03:27.610
so that people can walk around at night
in a mannequin graveyard.

75
00:03:27.610 --> 00:03:30.960
I did something that I called
the "Awful Halloween Walk."

76
00:03:30.960 --> 00:03:33.290
It's out in the middle of nowhere.

77
00:03:33.290 --> 00:03:36.480
And there's literally bodies and
mannequins all over the place.

78
00:03:36.480 --> 00:03:39.540
So it's not something that
you would usually see.

79
00:03:39.540 --> 00:03:43.790
It is something really, really
bonkers, out of this world.

80
00:03:43.790 --> 00:03:47.990
And so that has attracted quite
a few different film crews,

81
00:03:47.990 --> 00:03:50.750
not just horror films,
which is the obvious one,

82
00:03:50.750 --> 00:03:52.620
but also for music videos.

83
00:03:52.620 --> 00:03:56.710
So most people who are selling mannequins
in the UK, they do sell them.

84
00:03:56.710 --> 00:03:59.740
They don't do the hire because
there's a lot of work involved,

85
00:03:59.740 --> 00:04:02.270
but selling them is a linear process.

86
00:04:02.270 --> 00:04:06.290
So they are made,
most of the time, in China.

87
00:04:06.290 --> 00:04:09.320
They get transported over,
they go into the shops,

88
00:04:09.320 --> 00:04:13.220
they're used and then they
are just put in the bin.

89
00:04:13.220 --> 00:04:15.480
They get crushed. They go into landfill.

90
00:04:15.480 --> 00:04:17.500
Now, they are made from fibreglass.

91
00:04:17.500 --> 00:04:19.970
It's something that doesn't
decompose at all.

92
00:04:19.970 --> 00:04:22.340
And also they're really good fun things.

93
00:04:22.340 --> 00:04:24.460
So why on earth would you crush them

94
00:04:24.460 --> 00:04:26.340
and put them into landfill,
when in actual fact

95
00:04:26.340 --> 00:04:29.929
there are so many different uses for them
that could be done,

96
00:04:29.929 --> 00:04:35.790
not only to wear fashion,
 but to go onto TV sets, film sets.

97
00:04:35.790 --> 00:04:38.430
People come and get them to
decorate their gardens at Halloween.

98
00:04:38.430 --> 00:04:42.470
There's never a reason for
"let's put that mannequin in the bin".