Slap bang down town Harrogate, two guys have all of a sudden found themselves more famous that Rudy (sorry – Harrogate in joke). In a very convincing bid to raise shed loads of money for St. Michaels Hospice, these guys have brought a slice of reality TV to town.

I caught wind of them in Lancashire on Thursday when someone told me what was going on in my town. After a few beers at the Swan on’t Stray last night I popped home, grabbed my camera and headed down. At around 1 in the morning, town is a circus of a place at the best of time – and this shop window is on one of the main clubland thoroughfares and had amassed quite a crowd of Harrogatonians. A shop window with Jason & Ben two MusucBag clad chaps chilling and chatting and inter netting for 6 days.

An interesting dynamic – being able to interact with them by picking up a phone –  quite an odd experience – akin to a video conference crossed with a house party crossed with buying a ticket at a train station. Their facebook page shows a drift of nightlife through the small hours, whilst day time has seen TV crews, live music and gourmet food deliveries from William & Victoria. I asked them a few questions – but when I got in, fired off an email ‘interview’ at them which Ben graciously replied to.

Interview with Ben Davies ofuv The Mannequin Challenge

Below how  Ben handled my Q’s… I’d already asked “What’s the most asked question you’ve had” – the answer – toilet arrangements.

…But why else are you doing this? – Both Jason and I, like most people in Harrogate have been effected by the fantastic work that St. Michales do, they need to raise over 3.5mil a year from fundraising alone. So when we where asked by the hospice to enter the be inspired challenge to raise as much money as we could for the Hospice in a month we both jumped at the chance!

How did this come about – how did you wangle a shop front? – We have to thanks Harrogate legend Phillip Lund from Lateral Property Group for that one, we managed to get a meeting with him last week he loved our idea and gave us the keys almost straight away!!

Did Michael Vaughn, former England Captain, get in touch? (he’s in Harrogate tonight – filming for Question of Sport, was tweeting about jam and bettys earlier) No he didnt but we would love it if he did!

Who is the most famous person who’s been to say hello? We had a phone call from JK earlier in the week, he never showed his face though, we did manage to coax Charity Dingle in to the window with us for a cheeky picture though.

Have you you had National or International telly people saying hello? I have no idea because we don’t have a Television in here, Id love it if we did though!

Are you going to do another week? If the money was right I think we would do anything, I might walk out a single man if I stayed in any longer though and i really don’t want that to happen!!!

What has been the highlight (so far)? I think all the unexpected media attention (TV especially) we had a right laugh when ITV came down, it still doesn’t seem real to be honest, we thought we might make a couple of grand and get our picture in the Herald if we were lucky we ever thought it would ever grow as big as it has done!

(click for more photos)

Charming and polite chaps the pair of them. They also agreed to be official DragonDrop Adventure Shirt wearers – I popped down again today – armed with shirts. Good sports all round.

Support their cause – donate : justgiving.org/shopwindow

Like ’em on the book of face : facebook.com/themannequinchallenge

Follow them on twitter : twitter.com/awvida