Morning:
5°c
Rowing has thrown up a few surreal experiences for me but teaching Take That to row has to be right up there. I was driving down to Cornwall with my girlfriend for a couple of days when my brother Ross, who's also a rower, rang to say, “You better get back up to London”.
Take That's management had contacted our rowing club, Leander, to see if anyone could teach them to row for their latest video. I can't tell you the name of the video — I was sworn to secrecy — but I think the whole rowing thing was aimed at the fact that they'll keep going on as a band forever.
I was a big Take That fan back in the day so it was amazing to turn up for the first day to see Gary, Howard, Jason and Robbie there. Mark wasn't there until the second day and it was just awesome to meet them.
They were just down to earth guys hanging out with us and their families. They asked about me and I'm not sure they were all that convinced that I was an Olympic champion so I came down for the second day with my medal and their reaction was incredible. They all wanted to try it on and have their picture taken with it.
I talked to Robbie about life in Los Angeles as I lived out there last year. Then we got chatting about football and he said I should join him for a game at his home where he has a five-a-side pitch when I'm next in LA so he gave me his details which was a bit surreal.
When they turned up, they all admitted they thought the rowing would be easy but soon realised it wasn't. One of them fell in when we were training. I'm not going to single him out as I don't want to tear them apart again! Anyway, they know who they are.
But by the time it came to filming, I was very impressed with their rowing. I had the chance to appear in the video but sadly couldn't as for part of the second day I went off to the NFL's London headquarters to meet San Francisco 49ers coach Mike Singletary. Meeting him and Take That have got to be on a par. Hearing him talk is so motivational — the Football Association should get him in front of the England team.
I've also done some rowing since my last column. I was out in Germany training for 10 days and that was hard.
It was an intense camp but there was some respite from the training. We had a murder mystery night where I had to play the role of Cliff Hanger the mountaineer.
All in all, it's been an odd few weeks.
To find out what else Mark's been up to, visit twitter.com/markhuntergb
