15 MINUTES OF FAME
Monday 19th of July – The Glasgow Fair Bank Holiday, 8 o’clock in the morning. What a glorious day; the loch was like a mirror, the sky was clear, an osprey was fishing in Swan Bay. If only we had known what was to come.
It had started the previous Thursday, when I received a phone call from the BBC. Could a roving reporter for Fred McCauley’s Radio Scotland morning show, do an item on fly-fishing from Antermony and would the Club help him? I didn’t even think, I said ‘No problemo’.
On Friday, the reporter, Richard Cadey, phoned for a chat and asked if he could go to the loch, to check that his satellite dish could get a good contact with the satellite. We found that a good line of site contact could be made from the casting platform near the Stank, providing nothing was in front of it. However Richard said he wanted to be casting and trying to catch a fish, when he was broadcasting. I pointed out that, if he was casting from behind the £5grand piece of kit, the line might catch it and flip it into the loch. So we got a trestle table for the satellite dish, put it in the loch beside the casting platform and it worked a treat. Several of us then gave Richard, who had never fly-fished before, 10 minutes of casting tuition. As we made arrangements to meet early Monday morning, Richard casually remarked to myself and Davy Thomson, that on the Tuesday Show, he would be cooking the fish he caught on Monday. The more I thought about this, the more I realised that his chances of catching a fish were slim to nowt. So I phoned around.
First: teaching him how to cast, Willie McCutcheon, a qualified instructor would do that just before the show.
Fish, Jim Twaddle, Robert Malcolm and Graham Brown would fish on Sunday evening to put some in the bag for Monday. On Monday morning a squad would be out fishing early, to try and get some fish and Robert would show him how to smoke fish and give him some to take back for the Tuesday show.
It nearly went to plan. Fish were duly caught on Sunday night. On Monday we were at the loch early. Boats were out fishing. Fish were smoking. Willie was trying to show Richard how to cast, without knocking the satellite dish into the loch and the osprey was covering the loch. The whole Master-Plan had worked, with the Club members rising to the challenge like a well honed machine.
But there was one small detail we should have anticipated. It was Fair Monday and of course just before the broadcast started, it began to rain. Not the normal shower. NO it ‘P*****shed Down’ – in buckets, stair-rods, cat and dogs, ducks and drakes, you name it, it was like standing under Niagra Falls. Fred McCauley, in the studio, thought that the noise was hundreds of people clapping. Well the show started and there was a couple of minutes interview from our end and with the rain pouring out of the sky, we were like drowned rats, but we couldn’t desert the casting platform; we had to be available, when the studio wanted us.
Stuart Malcolm caught a trout and on air, gave it to Fred for his tea.
Despite the rain, we were doing it. The Club was producing the goods.
Then, mid interview, we were cut off.
What had happened?
In the headphones I could hear, ‘Cadey? Cadey? We have lost contact with Cadey – back to the studio.’
Had the rain got into the equipment?
NO! It was Oor Jim. Desperate to show the reporter a 4inch perch he had caught, he rowed to the casting platform, right in front of the satellite dish. After a moments concern, Richard was killing himself laughing and re-established contact and after three lochside reports the show was over. A drowned crew assembled in the hut for coffee and smoked trout and to take the mickey out of Jim, who had done what Al-Qaeda and the Taliban have failed to do – he had taken one the BBC’s roving reporters off air.
All this, for less than 15 minutes on the radio.

Roger Hughes 20.7.10

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