Thank you...and goodnight

My first ever radio appearance was in Inverness, in I think 1981, being interviewed by one Douglas MacRoberts about my album Out of the Harbour, for BBC Radio Highland. My last - for the moment, at least; never say never - will be tonight, when a specially recorded 'farewell' edition of Morton Through Midnight will be broadcast on BBC Radio Scotland, from 11.00pm until 1.00am.

It'll be a low-key affair. Just two hours of me talking about some (mostly) old records I particularly like, then playing them. Not the same ones I'd choose now, or if someone asked me for my top 15 records of all time. Just the ones that occurred to me a fortnight ago.

I'm not going to wallow in nostalgia, or not much. I plan - of course I do - to write about some of my more extreme, name-dropping wireless, rock'n'roll and journalistic adventures - drunk with REM in Athens, all too horribly sober with Britt Ekland in, err...Inverness, in a Greenpeace dinghy as Skye Bridge contractors attacked us with giant boulders, lost at 2.00am in the wilds of Compton, LA, stalking The Clash through a series of Glasgow pubs. John Major mistaking me for a traffic policeman...oh, I could go on and on. And I do, often. 

Anyway, a special thanks to those who have listened. And for those who have perhaps wondered what the mysterious Loft of Love looks like - the attic redoubt in my Shetland home whence Morton through Midnight came - maybe the wee video here will help.

Looking back: Some thoughts on the end of Morton Through Midnight

I’ve been broadcasting on BBC Radio Scotland for over 20 years. It’s time to give folk a break. 

Did I say ‘folk’? I meant rock, pop, blues, jazz and all the glorious panoply of  music we broadcast on Morton Through Midnight, 10.00pm  to 1.00am, Friday through Sunday (11-1 on the Sabbath). My last show will be Sunday 31st May. And then, after more than 20 years, that will be it.

I started on a mid-morning slot as vacation stand-in for Nancy Nicholson, learning my first and most important lesson as a freelance presenter: never go on holiday. Nancy did, I was asked to stay. Together with my producer, a young man called Jeff Zycinski, and the team in Inverness, we moved after a year or so to the early morning strand, five days a week, then four. Who can forget the interviews with Russian acrobats who couldn’t speak English? Being so hungover I had to broadcast flat on my back, being periodically sick into a handy bucket? Ivor Cutler talking live on air about his beloved penis, Britt Ekland thinking she was going to be on television and dressing accordingly and making her considerable displeasure more than felt? And that amazing  week of shows in Los Angeles, broadcasting from the middle of Compton at its most gangbanging? Jay Leno’s Scottish accent, meeting Ed Asner and Gregory Peck. Back in Inverness, there was the drinking, the long lunches, the food poisoning from on-air fish cookery, sleeping in a camper van in the BBC car park, destroying Chris Evans’ Radio One career, the midnight golf…

I left, chased by a wee touch of skin cancer, and after the weekly sarcasm of Man Bites Dog (early-to-mid-morning, came back in 2002 after five years to take over from Ian Anderson in the afternoons. The music started off as trad Scottish folk and a bit of country, moved on through to rootsy rock and finally centred on mainstream pop and rock with the occasional piece of Scottishness chucked in. TMS was produced in Aberdeen. See that BBC? They’re all over the place…even in Shetland.

From the start, I was living in the Shetland Isles and all the shows came from either the local BBC Shetland studios in Lerwick or from my house, in the remote parish of Northmavine. We pioneered the use of (now old fashioned) ISDN telecoms to broadcast, and MTM was the only long-form music show in the UK broadcast using an iPad and wi-fi. I’m proud of that. Remote, rural and worldwide.

In 2013 I was told that the afternoon show would end and was asked to work with my old pal Nick Low and his company Demus Productions on a three-hour Friday-through-Sunday late night music show. From early mornings to the late shift in 18 years. And who could complain? Demus and I had a two year contract. Let’s face it, it had to be better than working. 

And it was. A coterie of regular listeners from across the globe. Some great music and a fine production team.  We played some decent tunes, and talked nonsense into the wee sma’ hours. Some my favourite artists were happy to come in for a chat, from brand new Scottish singers like Fraser Anderson to American country superstar Eric Church, number one in the US album charts the day he recorded our session. Listeners became regulars, and then friends. I’ll miss them.

But it was hard. I know, that sounds like bleating self-pity from someone whose only job was to play records on the radio and talk. But after each three-hour (of late two on a Sunday) stint I felt very, very tired. Blood pressure crept up. So did cholesterol levels. The lack of actual human contact took its toll. A dangerous addiction to daytime telly began. I actually resigned two months ago, then changed my mind. Could I survive without eight hours a week of performing, of talking about myself? Of parading my vanity?

I took on a new part-time, temporary tourism development job which has proved hugely enjoyable. I thought the extra work was better for me, as I didn’t have time to be tired…at least I wasn’t watching Homes Under the Hammer repeats. There was a bit of PR work, copywriting, filmmaking, journalism, voluntary trusteeships…

And then. Chest pain, high blood pressure, high cholesterol. Three increasingly serious episodes over 36 hours. Full ambulance trip to hospital, a week of tests, a trip to Aberdeen by air ambulance, an operation…

Not being on the radio. And being relieved. Cancelling one weekend’s shows. Then another. And then thinking: I really don’t want to do this anymore. I’m nearly 60. Maybe it’s time to stop this gob-on-a-stick existence, as one of my former producers called it.

Then thoughts of maybe one show a week. Yeah, why not? Four days out of hospital, though, another, worse bout of chest pain. Back to the Gilbert Bain, loads more tests, a CT scan…it became evident that I’d pushed things too fast and far. I talked it over with the family and decided it was time to call it a night. The BBC and I agreed I’d do one final two-hour farewell show, and  that would be it.

I have to thank so many radio people. Maggie Cunningham, Jeff Zycinski. Nick, Ravi and Gregor at Demus. My many producers over the years, especially Anne Bates and Fiona Aitken. And everyone who ever listened. It’s been a blast. I wish my successor all the very best. 

Do I have any advice for them? 

Know when it’s time to stop. And stop before that.

Waiting for the Russians

I had no idea just how big the old MOD/RAF installations on top of Saxa Vord, Unst, actually are. And how spine-tinglingly Edge of Darkness the whole bomb-proof business is. And I didn't even get to explore the tunnels!

But what views from the road that leads to what was the UK's first line of defence against Russian nuclear attack. And, rumour has it, may once again have a dome built there to house....who knows what?

Anyway, it's beautiful, historic and slightly scary. A must-see for any Unst tourist, in my opinion. Tricky road, though, be careful. Don't be distracted by Muckle Flugga!

The Ballad of the Camper Van (and the RAC Man)

I’ll tell you a story, I don’t want to trouble you

I bought a camper van, a VW

I got it on eBay, in Auchinleck

A cash-on-collection, no-timewasters wreck

Resprayed, looked immaculate

MOTd, fully loaded

I was approaching Perth 

When the engine exploded

In a shower of milky white

Boiling hot water

I’d been screwed. I’d been led

Like a lamb to the slaughter

The man from the RAC simply giggled

Showed how the gear linkage wobbled and wiggled

Held together with cable ties, duct tape and hope

The scales fell from my eyes, and I felt like a dope

The silicon sealing the cylinder head...

It had been “newly serviced”, the seller said

The timing belt changed, the water pump too

“But not by someone who knew what to do”

Laughed the man from the Royal Club of Automobiles

Not seeming to care a jot how I might feel

“But they did just enough to fool someone on eBay

has this happened before, sir?”

I thought, then replied “maybe

Just nine or ten times in the past 20 years…”

I remembered the agony, the blame and the tears

The moss and the fungus in that Talbot Express

From Orkney, my daughter’s awful distress.

A Fiat - it broke down in a safari park

And stranded us on the Tay Bridge after dark

The T25 that I picked up in Kent

Got to Carlisle, before I found out the chassis was bent

And you had to steer sideways to keep going straight.

The several Type Twos that I learned to hate

For their back-breaking steering, their gear changes from hell

The air-cooled motors, the constant burning smell

And the breakdowns in Cumbria, Edinburgh, Wick

My wife always shouting, the kids always sick

“So why, said the man from the RAC, are you here

With another disastrous purchase, I fear?”

I replied “It’s an addiction, a gamble,  a chance

That somehow, just once out of all of those vans

I’ll find something solid and trustworthy and true

And we’ll drive off on adventures, to Katmandu 

Or to Keswick (that’s in England, but only just)

Instead, I shut doors, and get showered with rust

I carry gallons of water, and Radweld, and oil

I sit on  hard shoulders as radiators boil

And ponder the thousands of pounds that I’ve spent

And wonder if I’d be better off in a tent

Or how many hotel rooms could have been bought

With all I’ve invested in breakdowns and rot.”

“I’ve nothing to add to that” said the RAC chap

“Except just one thing: Your membership’s lapsed.”

Eclipsed by Shetland

Over the winter, I've wandered Northmavine with my camera set to Doom-Laden-Black-and-White-Artiness, snapping pictures of this, that and the other. But mostly the sky.

Elcipse, 20 March 2015

Sometimes it seems that Shetland is all sky. The low humps of the landscape, the lack of trees, the scattered humans and their occasional, crouching habitations...add some of the most extreme weather in Europe and you can find yourself unconsciously bent and cowering beneath the firmament.

I've known visitors who left swearing never to return, intimidated by what they saw as the massive, glowering threat above them, the sense of their own insignificance.

But our skies move and change, season by season, moment by moment. From the Northern Lights' strange flickering towers of night-time colour to the boiling, scudding clouds of day, the sharp beams of stark sunshine, highlighting the glint or thrashing power of the sea. I love it, winter and summer, viciously cold and blisteringly, briefly hot.

Eclipse skyscape,The Clave, Hillswick Ness

Anyway, today was to be the solar eclipse, and Shetland was promised 98 per cent of the sun obscured. Not that an obscured sun is that unusual hereabouts. Still, the moon had to do what the moon had to do, and so I prepared a flask of coffee and climbed the Clave, the highest point of the Hillswick Ness. I changed the camera's setting to Rock-Star-Rayban-Facing-Flashgun mode and waited.  Proper coffee, Vietnamese full roast from The Longship in Orkney. It was cold and gusty, but the sky...the sky was in full, playful try-and-keep-up mood.

Newmoonsun

I'd woken to stillness, thick sea mist and low cloud. By the time the moon was ready to do its thing, there were patches of blue sky and a scudding north-westerly wind moving things along briskly. Add the occasional squally cloud and rainstorm, and...

Obscured

I sat on the overgrown concrete base of an old wartime radio mast, drank Java and marvelled as the sun blinked, the eclipse showed itself coyly among the clouds, and Northmavine, Shetland and its ever-altering skies remained as miraculously beautiful as ever.

Nothing can eclipse that.