Single man about town and Herald reporter Tristan Nichols found it hard to resist a ‘dream job’ offer – even if it meant plenty of ribbing from his newsroom colleagues.
But as he discovered, being a male model for a holiday brochure assignment involved lots of hard work.

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If you were offered an all-expenses paid trip to sit around a Spanish resort and play in the pool all day, what would you say?

Add in the bonus of being paid to do it, would you turn it down?

Of course not, which is how I found myself being flown out to Benalmadena in the Costa del Sol for a unique assignment.

There was one snag of course, I had to ‘adopt’ a wife and three kids for the duration of the five-day trip and spend every waking hour being photographed for a holiday brochure.

Being a journalist I am more used to life behind the camera rather than in front of the lens.

Admittedly I’ve posed for a few illustrative pictures for the Herald, and maybe a handful of other bits and pieces, but being asked to do an actual modelling shoot? – that just isn’t normal in my world.

And while writing about my experiences are going to open me up to all sorts of ridicule, let me ask you: ‘Wouldn’t you jump at the chance?’

Having taken up the offer from a city promotions agency, I soon found myself packing a suitcase thinking how lucky I was and how easy the job was going to be.

The brief was a five-day ‘family’ shoot for First Choice holiday brochures at The Holiday Village Costa del Sol in Benalmadena, near Fuengirola. I was to travel to Bristol International Airport and meet my ‘family’ there – a fellow model I had never met before and her own three children.

‘Easy’, I thought, ‘how hard can it be?’ Wrong!

If you ever hear a model moan about how much hard work the job can be, believe them.

There were early starts, late nights – and all the time having to look like I’d slept for hours and was awake and full of beans.

Of course we couldn’t lay in the sun because our delicate and pale English (untanned) skin might get burnt and subsequently ruin any pictures.

When it came to doing dining shots at restaurants, we had to sit and watch our mouth-watering meals go cold while we did our ‘couple enjoying dinner’ shots.

If you can imagine opening a holiday brochure and reading the list of hotel facilities: three pools, four restaurants, a coffee bar, a crèche, an Irish bar, an internet room, shops, a tennis court, two games rooms, a crazy golf course, trampolines, and a health club among many other features, we – the family – had to do shots in just about every location.

While it was tiresome for me and my model ‘wife’, it was particularly exhausting for ‘our’ three kids.

Oh the tantrums and tears – and the kids were pretty agitated too!

Seriously, though, Thomas aged four, Lauren aged seven, and Georgia aged three were great.

The hours were long and there was very little time off. It was demanding.

Now I have to point out I’m not moaning at the job. It was great fun and a real experience. I mean, how many times are you going to have elderly women from Tyneside asking to have their picture taken with you because they think you’re famous?

I merely want to point out that this line of work isn’t all posing and mincing around.

At the end of the trip if I was told one more time to ‘hold it there,’ or change tops I think I would have screamed.

The most tiring part for me was keeping the kids constantly entertained, and making them want to smile for the camera. The children – as kids do – lapped up the attention and saw it all as one big joke. And the ‘wife’ and I couldn’t help but laugh at all the fun we had modelling.

Seeing life as a giant tick list, I can now put my mark in the ‘been an international model (albeit for five days) box’.

Tristan’s pictures will be featured in the First Choice Holiday Village Summer Fun and Families 2006 brochures, available from this month.

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