30-Apr-2008
THREE thousand fans turned up when the stars of one of America's biggest cult TV shows paid a flying visit to a British seaside village.
Viewers from all over Britain travelled to tiny Hemsby on the Norfolk coast to see their heroes from reality programme
American Chopper, which features a New York customised motorbike manufacturing business run by the Teutul family.
But what most fans didn't realise was the incredible behind-the-scenes efforts by aviation charter company FlyMeNow to ensure the Teutuls, who run
Orange County Choppers, made it to Britain.
Paul Teutul, his son Paul jnr and Mikey were spending just two days in Germany when the man who runs Europe's only OCC merchandising operation in a shop in Hemsby decided to invite them over to celebrate the store's first birthday.
Karl Hickey, of licensed products specialists Basic Box, said: "They were in Germany doing some work on a motorbike, and a bit of filming. They were over for two days before flying back to America and we thought: ‘Let's bring them to the store. What great publicity for our first birthday.'
"It was a bit of a last minute thing. We had never done anything like that before. FlyMeNow flew them over from Stuttgart into Norwich. We had them picked up from Norwich and brought to the store.
"There were 3,000 people here – 3,000 people who had turned up on a Friday morning in the freezing cold.
"They came from all over. We had people from Brighton, from Ireland, from Leeds. If it had been on a weekend, we would have had ten times that number. American Chopper is a massive show. On Discovery, it's the number one show in America and in every country it's shown in - the UK, France and Germany.
"They were here for about three hours, and then FlyMeNow flew them back to Frankfurt, where they caught a flight straight back to America."
Karl said he discovered FlyMeNow on the Internet after searching for
private jet hire.
"I rang a few and spoke to a few, but Andrew (FlyMeNow's commercial director) was really interested, and it was as if we had known each other for years. It was the personal touch. It was like: "Ok, what do you need to happen here? What do you need to do? We can do it," while the others were more corporate: "OK, where do you pick up from, and what time? Ok we'll send you a quote."
"We had never done anything like this before but Andrew gave us confidence. He was superb. The flights were spot on. We got an email from the guys at OCC later saying: "Thanks ever so much. It all went very smoothly."
"Everything went like clockwork. The flights landed on time. The flights went on time. They got to the other end on time.
"I would use FlyMeNow again. We are organising roadshows this summer all over the place to sell merchandise. We are going to St Tropez and Ireland and then Hamburg and Barcelona. Hopefully we are going to get some of the guys to come along to each of those events, and I would use FlyMeNow then."
