Take 15,000 lightbulbs to Romania for Christmas - what could make more sense?

I have a reputation for liking mad charity projects, so I perhaps shouldn't have been surprised when I got a call a few days before Christmas asking me if I would like to 'help' with a little project: lighting up a small town in Romania.

One of the actions taken following the revolution was to throw out all the people appointed by the old regime. This included not just political roles, but also virtually all management roles. Replacements were voted in.

The flaw in this plan was that few of the replacements had any management experience, with obvious effects on productivity.

The journalist had heard of a Romanian town without light because lightbulbs were in desperately short supply. The hospital, school, old people's home and several thousand homes were in darkness. Worse, the local factories had to close as soon as it got dark, so much of the population was on a reduced income, and production of everything else was being affected.

The journalist thought it would make a great picture story to light up the town for Christmas. The Mail on Sunday colour supplement was keen to run the story, and an ex-ITN cameraman wanted to film it for sale to News at Ten.

The only problem, and the reason I put the request for my 'help' in quotes, was that they were somewhat lacking in the logistics to achieve this feat. To be specific, with exactly 48 hours to go before the latest time they could leave to get their in time for xmas, they had:
- No lightbulbs
- No truck to take them there
- No ferry passage
- No insurance
- No shipping documents

What they did have was, to borrow a phrase from Strobes:
- a cheque for £2000 from National Power to pay for diesel
- er ...
- that's it

What they actually needed was someone to make it happen. A friend in an ad agency who knew of my penchant for challenging projects suggested the journalist call me. I, of course, said yes

I faxed the chairman of Philips to ask if he would donate the lightbulbs; he said that he would have been pleased to do so but they had just sold their last batch to Sainsbury's and the factory was now closed for Christmas.

I asked if they would buy them back from Sainsbury's if the supermaket would agree; he said they would.

I faxed the chairman of Sainsbury's and asked if they would sell the bulbs back to Philips; they agreed.

Ryder Truck Rental agreed to lend us a truck, Jarmain & Co kindly added it to their fleet insurance policy and P&O Ferries donated the ferry passage. We got everything together with four hours to spare.

With several drivers and a chase car, we drove non-stop and made it to Jimbolia in time to light up the town for Christmas Eve.

One of my favourite memories is sitting up until about 4am on Christmas Day in the kitchen of a local couple who put us up for the night drinking absolutely lethal home-made schnapps and successfully swapping dirty jokes despite the lack of any common language.

It was on the way back that we had a slight hitch. In my defence, time was very tight, so when we'd got to Dover to discover that there was a problem with the customs documentation, my priority was getting us aboard the last ferry to meet the deadline. We had the papers we needed to get there, so the journey back could wait. Only I, er, forgot ...

A quick introduction to carnets may be helpful here. When you take valuable cargo through a country, you need to be able to prove that the cargo entered the country (to prove you didn't buy it there) and that it left the country (to prove you didn't sell it there). This is achieved by carrying a sheaf of documents called carnets. When you leave a country, they take one carnet and stamp the next one. When you enter the next country, they take the stamped one and stamp the next one. And so on. The mathematically-inclined will have calculated that you need two carnets for each country you transit.

We were carrying £150,000's worth of TV camera equipment, so had carnets to permit us to carry it across Europe. Except that the shipping agent who supplied the carnets had got their sums wrong: we had enough carnets to get to Romania, but not enough to get all the way back. But we had only 15 minutes to catch the last ferry so we decided to sort this out on arrival. (We also had a single 'Free Passage' document for the lightbulbs, but thankfully no carnets necessary for those.)

The first problem was that we forgot. In all the excitement of getting there on time and lighting up the town, rushing the TV footage back to Bucharest for editing and setting off for some well-earned sleep, the matter of customs documentation wasn't exactly top of mind.

The second problem was that we transited an extra country. The mayor of Jimbolia suggested a shortcut which involved nipping through a corner of what was then Yugoslavia. The net result was that we arrived at the Yugoslav/Hungarian border with just one carnet left.

The Yugoslav customs man pointed out the bad news. We could use our last carnet to exit Yugoslavia, but then we couldn't enter Hungary. And when Hungary refused to admit us, he would be unable to let us back into Yugoslavia. Leaving us - or rather the camera equipment - stranded in the 100-metre no-man's-land between the two border points.

We had visions of one of those 'good news, bad news' phone calls to ITN. "The good news is that your camera equipment is safe. The bad news is that it's very safe" ...

We decided to attempt to bluff our way through. That is, I decided: I didn't want to worry my then-wife by telling her what I was about to attempt. The Yugoslav customs man clearly thought I was insane, but took the last carnet, shrugged and raised the barrier ...

We then arrived at the Hungarian customs point. I tried explaining the situation to the official; he was having none of it. I asked to speak to the person in charge; he was having none of it either. But in the course of these conversations, it became clear that none of them could read much English. So with a great show of having 'found' the missing carnet, I pulled out a random piece of official-looking paper from my sheaf of paperwork and handed it to him. He glanced at it, smiled, stamped it, retained it and we were on our way.

It was only afterwards that I realised what the document had been. Which is why, on arrival in Budapest on Boxing Day, I had to let the cameraman know that not only did he have to explain to the Hungarian authorities why he wanted to export £150,000's worth of camera equipment that never officially entered the country, but he also had to explain what happened to the 15,000 lightbulbs that officially did ...

Photos from the journey are being scanned & will be added later