(From Los Angeles to Los Alcazares.)

There we were in the local bar drinking coffee, reading newspapers (my new pastime) when this American guy walks in an asks the barman if he has the Fox sports channel, so that he can watch the college [American] football game that’s on in a couple of days time. Rare indeed is it to have somebody from across the pond in this neck of the woods, so I opened my ears to try to figure out from whence he came. I was at the bar at the time, just settling the bill and overheard him say that he, along with a film crew who have filled the local hotel, are in town to shoot ‘on location’ in a military base just a few minutes walk down the beach promenade from here. The hotel in which they are staying has the appearance of being closed over the winter, so it got me wondering whether there might be some big names in town hiding behind the locked door.

Naturally, I was curious to find out more as the biggest names that we usually have here on the Costa are Star Dogs who are touring the bars of Benidorm as I type. Outside the bar, we got chatting to the guy and discovered that the director of ‘United 93‘ and ‘Bourne Identity‘ was in town making a new Hollywood film, the title as yet undecided and that Matt Damon was also here too.After telling us that he just flew-in from Los Angeles today, Squiffy asked the man what his job was and got the slightly downplayed-response of “I’m an actor”. To which she responded, “Oh! Anyone we should have heard of?”.Bless him, the poor bloke could only respond with “Umm, probably not in that case then, no”. In fairness to him, there is no good way to answer this question: One can hardly say “Of course! Don’t you know who I am?!”He introduced himself as Sean and we said our good lucks and goodbyes. For all we know, we’ve just met a A-list celebrity and Squiffy just told him to pick-up one of the local free papers to get the TV sport listings.

I might go out for a bike-ride a bit later on an do some further undercover investigative work, in my bright blue helmet. It’s amazing how one finds things to pass the time…

STOP PRESS: With the help of the Internet, we’ve deduced that the film is likely to be ‘Imperial Life in the Emerald City‘ by Paul Greengrass, starring Matt Damon.