 Rob Kazinsky made his name in the Sky football series Dream Team, where he played Casper Rose. He later became the brooding anti-hero heartthrob, Sean Slater in BBC soap Eastenders. However, last year he left Walford after trying to kill his screen girlfriend, Roxy Mitchell (Rita Simons) and baby Amy by driving them into a lake after discovering that he wasn’t Amy’s real dad! Perhaps more relevant to this Call Sign story is that Sean played the nephew of Charlie Slater (Derek Martin) who plays a licensed taxi driver in the soap. So putting aside Eastenders, Rob recently turned up in a fly-on-the wall BBC3 show, The Real Hustle where he played a minicab driver – not sure what uncle Charlie would have said! The Real Hustle has gained an almost cult following as it attempts to pull off real hustles on camera with members of the public who have no idea they are being hustled or conned. The episode Rob Kazinsky appeared in (The Diamond Geezer) had him going undercover as a private hire driver – albeit with a nice car - ferrying some "marks" across London to return a cash deposit in return for some hired jewels. Rob has to somehow get his passengers to believe they have a case of valuable jewels after having been convinced that it would be ok if they laid out the money for a stranger who promised them £200 for just forty |
Eastenders heartthrob Rob: "DON’T USE MINICABS!" |
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minutes work. The duo
originally had the money for the purchase of a laptop and the £200
was to be taken off the price. Needless to say the marks eventually
get totally hustled by losing the jewels and their own cash.
Fortunately, The Real Hustle makes sure that no one really loses
out. The participants usually agree to allow the footage to be shown
so viewers can see how easily the scam works. With his suit, glasses and flat cap Rob was virtually unidentifiable until the end of the program when standing in front of the 59-plate BMW "minicab," he told how easy it had been to pull off the scam. Then in a move that surprised even this mag with it’s hard-nosed staff, Rob told viewers to wait just a second while he walked back to |
the driver’s seat and pulled
out a minicab ID card that private hire drivers all seem to wear
around their necks as a sign of "respectability." Rob held the plastic card up to the camera and told Real Hustle viewers just how easy it had been to pretend to be a "taxi driver" and just how dangerous it was for anyone to get into a car just because the driver has a plastic ID card. He ended by asking why people are so ready to believe that just because the driver waved a piece of plastic card with their name on, it was ok to get in the car? Charlie Slater would have been so proud! The regular hustlers are Alex Conran, Jess Clement and Paul Wilson and the program is an Objective Productions program for BBC3... |
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Eco City Vehicles: Pre tax loss of £340,000... Eco City Vehicles, the developer and supplier of eco-friendly
commercial vehicles including the Mercedes Vito taxi, have
posted a However sales of the Vito taxi have risen 34.2% to £7.1m, more than half of Eco’s total £12.8m turnover. This has been driven by continued growth in London and regional sales. The total number of new Vitos sold increased from 167 to 234 vehicles and production at Coventry has been ramped up to 12 cabs a week from the previous 8. Eco City say that current trading remains encouraging and that demand for the Vito taxi is still growing, with the number of sales expected to reach the 1000 by the end of 2010. Like LTI, the group are said to be pursuing potential export orders following what they claim to be excellent market feedback, in addition to the development of a left-handed drive version of the Vito. CEO Peter DaCosta said: "Despite challenging trading conditions, Eco City has delivered a satisfactory first half result with continued revenue growth and market share gains for the increasingly popular Vito taxi, as drivers and customers alike recognise its superior performance, comfort and efficiency compared with other taxis." |
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pre-tax loss of £340,000 for the six months to the end of June.
Twelve months ago for the same period, the company declared a profit
of £149,000.