I Taught A Bond Girl How To Surf … and Then I Cried

Coverage of a three-day luxury watch press trip in Biarritz and the launch of my book the Breitling Book Of Surf. I laughed, until I cried. And it wasn't because of the dictophone up my bum.

Oh how we laughed. Until we didn’t.

I was standing on a shallow bank as two-foot(ish) runners were meandering towards shore under cloudless skies at the Cote de Basque, in Biarritz. I tried to push a young lady into a just-broken whitewater and watched as she struggled to her feet and nose-dived simultaneously. I kept repeating the procedure and like an insane man kept getting the same results. 

I would later find out she was the actress Tonia Sotiropoulou, perhaps most famous for playing Daniel Craig’s lover in the James Bond movie Skyfall. She was an actress of incredible talent and a woman of spine-dazzling beauty, but she couldn’t surf if a Bond villain had put a gun to her head.

On the flip side, she probably thought, “Who is this strange man I’ve never met, trying to teach me a sport I don’t like?" Maybe I was the Odd Job in this scenario. I pushed the foamie and her towards the impressive trio of Justine Dupont, Steph Gilmore and Johanne Defay. They were chatting away in a French lilt and having way too much fun.

Tonia Sotiropoulou in the green jacket, looking at me, thinking of Daniel Craig.

To the right of me, Roby D’Amico — a devilishly handsome, Italian pro surfer and eco-warrior whose hugs have launched a 1000 ships — was balancing the French tennis pro Aliza Lim on a 7’8”’, whilst simultaneously pushing the famed Spanish actor Alvaro Morte, best known as ‘The Professor' in the television series Money Heist, into the tiny lefts. And no I haven’t seen it either. 

To my left, I was furious to see Jeremy Flores ushering the CEO of Breitling into four waves with a 100% success rate. Morgan Maassen stood in the knee-deep water and filmed the boss straight-legging the straighthanders on a camera that had, most probably, clocked Kelly Slater in 15-foot Tahitian tubes and spent a year focused on Malia Manuel’s best bits. There’s a new Breitling contract for both bastards I thought. And a new watch.

Watches and surfing seemed to be having a thing. This timekeeping mob had paid me to write a book about surfing. It's a wonderful, expensive, glossy, heavy piece of kit. Paper stock to die for. Incredible imagery. Each one tells a 1,000 words. That didn’t stop me from needlessly adding another 20,000. Buy it here.  I had my wrist measured for a £6000 watch to wear whilst MC’ing the launch, which would be removed precisely 90 seconds after I left the stage. I sent a photo of the watch on my wrist to the boys. “You’ll own that by the end of the day,” Audetty replied. “And you’ll have lost it by the end of the night.” 

Kelly Slater is the book. Sally Fitz and Steph Gilmore too.  As are a myriad of surfers from all over the world. Steph would lead half of them in the water to push actors, athletes, celebrity chefs, Italian GQ editors, watch journalists, Olympic BMX’ers, Formula Two drivers, and influencers into the tiny waves. Natxo Gonzales, Cottie, Jamie O’Brien, Freddie Meadows and the hedge-jumping Lucy Campbell were all on hand. I’d never seen such a gaggle of the best, or worst, surf instructors. 

Breitling had bubbled all of them together, booked the 50-plus gang at the Hotel du Palais (built in1853 by Napoleon III for his wife Eugenie and coming in around €800 a night) for three days, plied us with the best food and booze Swiss francs can buy and launched a watch range.  It was my perfect scenario; free, with a captive audience. Nothing gives me a bigger stiffie than the chance to repeat my old jokes to a new crowd.

It was here in 1957 that the Hollywood scriptwriter Peter Vietels had the first ever surf in France. The next year he returned with three boards and gave one to local Joël de Rosnay, who became the first French local.

In what could only occur in France, de Rosnay would later become an imminent molecular biologist, systems theorist, science writer, and futurologist. His most famous conceptual theory was the macroscope; a mechanism that filters details and amplifies that which links things together.

De Rosnay’s macroscopic theory made me a little woozy. Or maybe it was last night’s mix of beef shin and espresso martinis. Everything is connected, everything is amplified. 

I’d got my start in surfing at a watch launch. This was around 2000, so I can only assume it was a Casio G-Shock. I wasn’t there, but a journo who had just started at Tracks was and after too many free beers, had flogged one of the new watches left on for display at the table. He'd been sacked after one week in the gig, and I was next in line for the job.

His mistake had led me here to this. It had been an uneven journey, and I too had made mistakes — but here I was; claiming the failure to teach a Bond Girl to surf as a success. But, hey ho, I was sitting next to the Atlantic, drinking free piss with Steph, Jeremy Flores, and Jamie O’Brien — so there was that. 

Oh the access. The insight. My contributions were minimal. “Oh yes, I suppose the pre-nuptual conversation must be awkward when trying to finish the Final series of Succession,” I proffered. “Mmm, I can see how difficult it must have been getting four million together in a week to land the real estate deal of a lifetime,” I stammered.  “No, I didn’t know ____ had put a _____ up his  _____ and survived the ______” I spat. 

JOB, room with a view, Surf Bugle Fans Maelle and Aliza Lim

Later, at sunset at a private villa overlooking the wave of Guethary, being served organic Basque brisket cooked in an open fire and gargling down a Bordeaux red, I became privy to a range of secrets only found at the intersection of surfing and luxury. A chilled fresh nor-west breeze had whipped up in the Bay of Biscay, which only served to elevate the wind protection of the pure wool, monogrammed blankets we'd all been gifted (the £300 rrp added another lovely layer of warm smugness).

Or maybe it was the high-grade weed gummies I’d been offered, and taken just before, talking to the famous (or so I was told later) Colombian actress Paulina Dávila. I’d mentioned to her how my daughter Emily says “Colombia”, in the same way that Gloria does in Modern Family. She replied that the actress who played Gloria, Sophia Vergara, was her cousin. Later, when I retold the story for the 60th time to anyone who would listen, even my 11-year-old kid wasn’t interested.  

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Then it was time for my showstopper; the water-in-the-face game. That’s a trust game where a table member tells the players a category — say watch brands as an example, and chooses a single item in that category (an example might be Swatch) but doesn’t tell anyone. You go around the table, and if anyone says the item you've thought of, you throw a small amount of water in their face. If no one says it, you throw it in your own face.

It is the best dinner party game in the world, though the influencer with more than a 2.5 million followers whose make-up was running down her face would, and did, argue that point ferociously. Jamie O’Brien and Natxo weren’t interested. They were showing each other videos of quite possibly the biggest and best barrels I’d ever seen at offshore reefs near their homes. The secret spots had never been outed and the footage was forbidden to be shared. But, hey, I’m a surf journalist. That means I have two types of secrets; ones too good to keep, and ones not worth keeping.

Blankets, red-wine stained teeth, Naxto and JOB swap stories

The night roiled on. Such was the fun I almost missed the poolside breakfast (a steal at €50), and the late checkout. I just had time for a last sauna, shared with an elite big wave rider who after venting his theory that measuring the size of waves for records is a form of futile, technically impossible, egotism said, “Mondy, what is said in the sauna, stays in the sauna.” And that’s a direct transcription from the dictaphone I had secreted up my arse. 

It couldn’t last. Not the dictaphone. Me. I wasn’t meant for this world. I was booted out, wrenched off the corporate, luxury tit and so headed to my mate Richard Marsh’s for my last night in Biarritz. Never had a move from the Palace to a Dog's house been so swift. With Dog away and his wife Sabine at work, I borrowed his teenage son’s pushbike, and Sab’s mini-mal, and rode the few clicks to the beach for a surf. The bike was too small, the board too big, and I was being forced inland by an ever-strengthening, onshore wind.

Through the fog of a champagne and gin-laced hangover, I thought about how De Rosney’s macroscopic theory isn’t supposed to be used to make things larger or smaller but to observe what is at once too great, too slow, and too complex for our eyes. I’d use that in the story, I thought, even if I didn’t know what it meant. And then I started to cry.