The Daily Show with Jon Stewart visits The Reef

Recently I got a strange phone call from a producer at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart... they were arriving in Cayman in two days and needed somewhere to shoot a segment for the show, plus some help shooting around the island.

Hmm, I thought. I'd seen the show a number of times (before Hurricane Ivan took out my cable TV, seemingly never to return) and had become a fan of the way it skewers pomposity on all sides of the political spectrum.

So, "why not!" I said and then seemed to quickly become the unofficial production assistant for the show. A couple of hours after the call, I happened to be giving a tour of The Reef to one of the guys from the PR agency for the Cayman Department of Tourism, and when I told him The Daily Show was coming down, it looked like his head would explode (but then, being the pro that he was, he popped out the Blackberry and started to work out what was going on)... we figured quickly that the idea was to poke fun at Cayman centered around the proximity of the filming to "tax day" in the USA.

Still, we figured, on balance it would be fun, and as Cayman has long since shed the image of hiding tax dollars for shady individuals (we're too sophisticated for that now... now we juggle money for the world's biggest companies instead.... off balance sheet finance makes rocket science look like grade school science projects :))

Oops, I digress. Anyway, the segment by The Daily Show turned out to be a lot of fun, both to do and to watch, and Cayman looked GOOD. The Reef is featured in numerous shots.. basically wherever you see a cool beach or sea shot, it is at The Reef.

Ed Helms, Jim Margolis and their freelance sound and video guys were fun too, I went with them to dinner at Ristorante Pappagallo and we were became experts on thatched roofing as Vico told us everything they had been through since the storm. Pappagallo is one of my favourite resturants, and Vico and his team are great, so it was terrific to see them up and running. They are about as far from The Reef as you can go and still stay in Grand Cayman, but it is worth the drive.

Anyway, in looking at the videos on their website, looks like they have pulled the video.. I'm guessing someone in Cayman didn't have a sense of humour. Too late though, I saved it and have it hosted. Watch out though it is 27mb... so although it is streaming video, you best have a serious broadband connection if you want to see it (Windows Media Player format).. but it is worth it, click here !