Billy Connolly (Journey To The Edge Of The World) Interview

Billy Connolly: Journey to the Edge of the World sees comedian Billy Connolly turn explorer, as he embarks on a rare and remote journey – attempted and failed by hundreds before him – through the treacherous Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

In this brand new ITV1 series, Billy negotiates the much coveted passage inside the Arctic Circle which is choked with impenetrable ice for most of the year.

The fabled passage through the Arctic Ocean was sought after for five centuries as a commercial sea route and claimed hundreds of lives of those trying to discover a navigable way through, but now global warming means that for a few weeks in the summer the ice melts and gives Billy a chance to make an extraordinary once-in-a-lifetime journey.

Motivated by a desire to live out his boyhood dreams before he gets too old – and to have a laugh – Billy spends 10 weeks making the 10,000 mile trip from Nova Scotia to the Pacific by, by sea, road and air, acting as a tour guide for viewers in his own unique way.


What made you decide to go on this adventure?

“The outstanding thing about Canada is that there is hardly anybody there, the first impression you get is, ‘My God there is nobody here,’ Canada is just staggering in that respect, they all seem to clump along the border and there is this huge bit at the top, a lot of which is snow covered,…but a lot of it isn’t.

“There are a lot of mountainous lake filled areas, forest areas, just the most breathtakingly beautiful place and it’s a wonderful thing to show the world, that there is space, there is room, because people think we’re all living shoulder to shoulder and there’s no room and we’re eating all the food - it just simply isn’t the truth.

“It’s a lovely thing to be able to show the world there is plenty of room. The world is actually a rather beautiful place.

“It’s a very exciting project I don’t know of anyone who has ever done it before and I have a personal liking for the arctic. It is the most extraordinary corner of the world, it’s every bit as dramatic as going deep into water, it’s every bit as foreign as that when you find yourself confronted with enormous space. I am really looking forward to experiencing it. I like the people who live there and I like the positive side of the world. I like the people who live in it and just get on with it.

“I mean to show people something, hopefully, they never saw before and are entertained and delighted by, maybe even horrified by, but to present them with something they didn’t know existed or in a way they that they never knew existed.”

How do you feel about all the travelling? Do you like travel?

“I do. I have liked it since I was a boy…I remember my first sojourn into England. It was the longest thing I’d ever done. It was Glasgow to Blackpool and I thought I was on the dark side of the moon. As I got older then I was in the Territorial Army and we went to Cyprus and Malta and Libya and I really got to like the look of the world. I travelled a lot during my hitchhiking, younger days and now, for a living, I’ve travelled all over the place and I do love it and I like the world itself, I like being in it.”

How did you cope with bad weather?

“Bad weather? There’s no such thing. My old pal Jimmy Kemp, my old fishing pal, said there is no such thing as bad weather, it’s only the wrong clothes. Bad weather, as it’s popularly known, can be spectacularly beautiful, it can do great things to your head, and your hair and your clothes and your voice, you have to shout a certain way to be heard and it changes the whole texture of the thing.

“The weather is a bit like the north of Scotland, you take it or leave it, but you know the mistake is to call rain bad weather, it’s a huge mistake, it’s only weather and if that’s bad you’re doomed. And I wish the British weather forecasters would stop calling it bad weather because I am sure it has a profound psychological effect on the people.

“The people here [in the Arctic] don’t seem to mind the weather one little bit. They think it’s funny. The weather is good here and they make the most of the winter. They have a wonderful long snowy icy winter and places that used to be lakes now become highways on the skidoos and off they go and hunt and fish through the ice and it’s lovely.”

Did you have any hiccups along the way?

“It’s funny, I came off the plane and I thought, ‘Something’s wrong, I don’t know what it is.’ It was my banjo. I’d left my banjo on the plane because the guy took it off me and put it in a cupboard. Usually it’s beside my stuff but sometimes, very kindly, they’ll put in the wardrobe where it can stand up, but the fellow wouldn’t let me back through the gate to get it…you know the gate we had come through, he wouldn’t let me back through…so I had to wait and I was trying to appear calm, you know, but sometimes you can’t. Your heart isn’t calm and then the stewardess came trooping down the stairs holding my banjo. God, it was such a joy to see it. So that was the only hiccup and normally I often forget things and leave things in hotel rooms …I’ve had too much of my life with management and roadies, to be quite frank, running after me, clearing up after me and other guys have had to look after themselves more than I do but I am absolutely capable. I had very few clothes with me so I am going to look quite the same a lot of the time.”

Did you get a bit smelly then?

“Well I smelt pretty bad at some points but that’s okay I don’t mind and I am sure the moose and bears don’t mind. But in the wild it was lovely. You know that leafy smell, that leafy muggy smell that you notice right away in the country.”

What did you think of the Titanic graveyard?

“For years…when I was a boy I’d read in Readers Digest…and there was an account of the sinking of the Titanic and the person who had written it had said he was on a lifeboat, he was only a child at the time, with his mother, looking back at the boat. The men were waving, the glow of their cigars into the night and it stayed with me all these years - the bravery of somebody taking their time to wave, knowing his death is imminent and it has remained with me and that went through my mind a lot when I was in the graveyard.

“The drowning…I find horrifying, although there are accounts by people who said they were drowning and were rescued while unconscious. They said it was a very pleasant thing, just like falling asleep. I always imagine it to be like choking and being strangled but apparently it isn’t.”

Tell us about the grave of J Dawson…

“Oh yes, that was lovely because there’s Jack Dawson in the movie. And there is a J Dawson grave but it’s actually Joseph Dawson a stoker, coal shoveller and now there is something wonderful about Joseph Dawson in death, becoming a hero. People visiting his grave, this completely forgotten man because he’s become Leonardo DiCaprio and he has become a sort of dead sex symbol which is absolutely fantastic, I think.”

You saw people taking photos of his grave?

“Yeah, there was a whole bunch and…at that grave, big bus loads of people.

“But the one that kills me is the tourist cruises being taken up to the Titanic grave, you would think that was the last place on earth you would take people on a cruise and it’s just bizarre in the extreme.”

Tell us about the people in Canada who celebrate the Highland Games…

“It’s extremely odd because it’s a celebration of Scottish heritage and culture, supposedly, but there is very little Scottish heritage and culture in it, most of it is kind of hand knitted and the kilt and the kilted outfit that you see is mainly military and hasn’t existed beyond the Victorian era. People say, ‘We’ve been here since seventeen fifty whatever and we’re celebrating our heritage.’ ‘That is not your heritage.’

“People…like to see the bands marching up and down and the stirring music and all that and I have my doubts about it but…at the last minute I can’t resist the pipes and drums and the marching music, it’s too much part of my life.

“As a child I lived…right opposite the school that I went to and on a Friday night in the dining hall in our school the pipe band would practice…so I know all these tunes from my childhood. Every Friday night those pipes and drums were in my life and they were such a huge part of me.”

When did you last wear a kilt?

“A couple of weeks ago I had mine on in Scotland I just put it on and went for a walk…I wear knickers, it rubs the hell out of you that wool, that rough wool. As a matter of fact that whole underwear thing comes from the military - the original kilt was a huge piece of cloth which wrapped around you and…the only remnant of it left is the plaid, the big curtain that hangs from your shoulder…and it used to be your house, it could be a tent, it could be a bag, a sleeping bag.

“It was a wonderful garment; it could be made into all sorts. It was far too heavy to fight in so when they fought it was held on with just with a belt and so when they were going to fight they just loosened the belt and stepped out of it and fought naked. It’s the military tradition in Scotland that you fight naked so that’s why soldiers never wore underwear and there was a wee mirror on the floor of the guard house, you had to stand at ease and they could see up your kilt…and you got punished for having underwear but…I think the “going commando” thing is a bit over rated to say the least. Slightly on the disgusting side.”

Tell us about the scarecrows you encountered in Chéticamp…..

“It was just such a gas. We came round the corner in the car to where the scarecrows are and there’s a little parking lot in front of them and the first thing I saw was a line of politicians; Reagan and Nixon with false faces on top of normal human six foot size bodies.

“They had kind of shabby clothes but didn’t look shabby from where I was sitting in the car and it startled me a little, didn’t frighten me in anyway, it was not what I expected to see. I had in my head, I had an idea of what a scarecrow looks like - this was not it and there were so many and a huge circle of different looking people and it blew me sideways.

“These two locals came up, they were delightful, I don’t know whether it was my enthusiasm that kicked off something in them but they seemed as enthusiastic as me. And they were both delightful and very informative and just as excited as me. I was so delighted it was like it had crossed over from kitsch for me into a real art form.

“I remember meeting a girl once, years ago, who had a collection of ice-cream cones - without ice cream, just the cones and it’s that thing when you see a collection of things, as opposed to one - when someone takes the ordinariness of one thing and makes it extraordinary either by showing you all different kinds or just having an awful lot of them in ranks, it takes on an extraordinary quality. Well, that’s what they did, these statues. I didn’t like to think of them as scarecrows, it had crossed over into art, as far as I am concerned.

“It just absolutely stunned me then when Chester showed up. And he was the nicest guy. And some of the statues were commemorating the lives of people he knew - there was a coal miner and a fisherman, both of whom were dead, and they’re not normal monuments but they were every bit as good as a monument to commemorate the lives of these people he knew.

“And then he did one of me which I found very funny and nice. And very very very pleasant and then we ate at his place and I knew the food would be good because when you think like that, it’s a great British theory that, if you cook with love it tastes good, it’s just a fact of life and it does. But the thing I found was that my preconceived notion was that it would be small, it turned out to be big, I will think about it and remember it for a long long time and tell people who are coming here to go and see it because it’s made a profound effect on me and I love that, I love being proved wrong. I love being swathed by people and I love changing my mind and it was just one of those magic days.”

Tell me about some of the animals you encountered along the way….

“I am blown away by whales and dolphins and deer and moose and anything big, that just wakes up in the morning and gets about its life. Often in Scotland I will be driving up to the house…and you will see these monster red deer with antlers and they’re five feet high at the shoulder…a huge chunk of meat and horns and hair and you think, ‘How do you do that? How did you get so big and strong?’ It just baffles the life out of me and when I see a whale or a big salmon or a dolphin swimming along being brilliant at what it does it just blows me sideways and I am never tired of it and I have seen lots of whales and I hope to see many many more, and deer and things.”

You liked staying at Quipon lighthouse in Newfoundland didn’t you?

“It’s just lovely being in that old house and wondering what had happened and then I hear the following day there had been a murder there years ago…in the 1900s…but what I loved about it was the view from outside the lighthouse it was just, to see the Atlantic suddenly you get an idea of this monstrous piece of water, the sheer size of this exercise, the extraordinary size. I loved it. I thought that was the highlight for me standing there…just standing looking at the sea.”

When you were iceberg spotting, didn’t you get a chance to fly a plane?

“What a treat. I’ve sat with pilots before in aeroplanes and I’ve been in a glider with a guy but I’ve never flown an aeroplane before. I thought he was kidding me at first…I thought maybe he was working it with his feet like a duel controlled car or something but he took his feet away.

“He told me to give it a wee try at first, and give a wee left and a wee right. There was a lovely moment where there was a big iceberg and he said, ‘They want to film it from the right, pull the plane to the right.’ Oh my heart sang a wee song.

“You may be familiar with George Simenon, he’s a Belgium novelist but he used an expression that I use a lot, he used it in a love letter. He wrote. ‘I received your letter yesterday and I had a little party in my heart.’ And every now and again I have a wee party in my heart and that was in the plane, I had a wee party

“It was lovely and then we were coming into Williams Harbour and they said the clouds were right at the windscreen here and he said, ‘Drop the nose a bit and get a wee bit below the clouds.’ Ooh and I was so pleased with myself and then we were landing and he took the controls back again. But on the way back we were coming in to land and he said, ‘Grab the wheel again.’ And he said, ‘We’ll land it together.’ And he explained what he was going to do…and down we came. I wish I’d learnt to fly when I was younger it would have been great.”

What did you think of Pangnirtung when you stopped there?

“Pang was a bit of a dump really…at this bit of the world…it kind of looks temporary. It looks as if they’ve flown stuff in by helicopter and landed it and moved people into it. People seem to live in garden sheds and I don’t mean that as an insult or a sarcastic remark that’s what they instantly remind me of, both their shape and their colour, they look like garden sheds or sort of an accidental garage stuck on the side of somebody’s house. It’s a great sadness about it you know, especially when you see old films of how Inuit used to live and they looked so happy and complete when they were like that.

“But the other thing is, I am an outsider and coming in their summer and seeing people not only are they in a town but it isn’t winter and they are kind of defined by winter, snow defines them and there is less and less snow every year, so they are less and less defined and it also covers a multitude of sins, snow and so the place looks ugly when there is no snow there and then when the snow comes and all the ugliness is covered up. That sounds very patronising from a townie like me coming into the society but that’s my first impressions and most of them are kind of wrong.”

Tell me about the Auyuittuq National Park….

“It’s a sensational place, if you can bear the cold it’s an absolute sensation…holy mother of God, what a place. You feel as if you’re in a movie like Lord of the Rings or something. It’s just miraculously wonderful and nobody there - there’s only 600 visitors a year and it’s just pristine and sensational; a big glacier sitting at the top of the mountains.

“It’s also a disaster, you can feel it in the air, this global warming where the perma frost is melting and becoming temper frost, they’ll have to change the name of it. It doesn’t perma anymore, big boulders are running down the hill and it’s kind of scary. I don’t know if it ever dawned on you or occurred to you, it certainly did me all those years in Scotland, cycling and camping and messing about in the countryside, you look at big boulders all over the hills and you think, ‘Well it must have rolled.’

“I have never seen a thing rolling down a hill but just it seems to have rolled a century ago or maybe last night when nobody was looking but up there, because of this warming thing you get huge avalanches happening every five seconds, not huge like Alpine avalanches, just maybe 50 rocks tumbling down a hill into the water but if you just sit there it will happen right before your eyes as it’s crunching down.

“There’s one bit, a glacier lake fed by three waterfalls from a glacier on a hill – they’re sensational waterfalls, one of them, the glacier has come two thirds of the way down the hill and then there is a hole in it like a tunnel, with water just streaming out of it at the bottom, just flooding through this cave in the glacier.

“It’s just so weird to behold, it’s feeding this lake which is in a bit that looks like an above ground pool, although it’s made of perma frost you would think it had been built by hand.. this.. rectangular place, well there are two enormous cracks in it -horizontal cracks and our cameraman went up on the hill to look down on it and he said, ‘The wall is really thick apart from where the cracks are, it’s really thin.’

“And the guy we were with, who’s an expert in the area, said it will last about a year. I give it a fortnight and I am just a big stupid townie and an instant expert because I have walked across the place and it looks as if it’s going to collapse tomorrow.

“I have never seen that kind of thing, this erosion before your eyes. Erosion is something that happens over centuries where I come from. But just to see it just happening. Bricks and boulders just falling out of this thing constantly and the water raging underneath. It’s going to make a bloody tsunami and there’s two of them, there’s one further up as well in the exact same shape.

“We’re sitting on the edge of something enormous here and it’s breathtaking, not only in its size and scope but in the ignorance of us, the human race, you don’t know what to do with something that big. You know the glaciers are melting, ‘Oh yeah, can you tell me something I should be doing?’ And recycling your garbage isn’t going to do it – it’s going to be hell. It’s extraordinary, it’s extraordinary to behold.”

How tough was your trek through the park?

“It was hard. It started with the difference in surfaces, it started with a kind of sludgy sea bed or the river bed up there is very fine sand and with the tide goes out. Its very slick and slippery and sludgy and horrible and so for about a mile or two it was that till my shoes were six times the normal size. Then it was grass and steep and then rocky until we came to the shed, the cabin where we officially started, then it was rocky, rocky, rocky. And hard, hard work walking in it. Then it was two or three or four rivers to cross, rocks, rivers, rocks, rivers and then a desert. Sand for about a mile or two. Sand dunes.

“It was hard, hard work. Some of it was climbing, not much of it was climbing but some of it was. But it was very very hard, it was a trek, it was very hard. What a great feeling having finished the trek. I don’t know what was best about it, I think watching the glacier lake disintegrate.”

You were taken by helicopter up to the glacier? Were you nervous?

“Yeah. The lake is solid unless it overflows…and when we flew away past it and up into that Arctic Circle bit and then up into a glacier and I had never been…before – holy, holy moly - quite frightening in as much as it looks as solid as a rock. When we landed the helicopter and I got off and they flew away without me in order to film me, it was quite windy, I was quite nervous because I could hear the glacier melting beneath my feet and it was a big echoey noise and there were puddles in the top of it - if you broke into the ice with your heels there was a puddle maybe a foot deep.

“And I thought, ‘Well, how thick is the ice I’m standing on?’ Now, it might be a mile, I don’t know, but it felt like four inches to me and I thought, ‘You know, if I fall in here they’re not going to find me for 20 years, when I eventually emerge up the river, 80 feet long and two inches wide.’”

“The sheer size of the exercise was awe inspiring. The future is frightening if you want it to be but I think it’s absolutely awe inspiring as well. And, if you look at the Inuit people they’re determined to deal with climate change, they won’t be defeated by it, most of them won’t, they’ll find a way round it, they’ll find a way to fish, they’ll find a way to mine. Whatever treasures that were unavailable to them when the snow was there, they’ll have a wee look at what was there now that the snow has gone.

“It was just one of those days you’re going to remember, not so much on your death bed, but you’re going to tell people, and I am on first name terms with the glacier now, me and glaciers we got on just dandy and I had a nice wee moment when I could hear it tinkling underneath me and I could hear it melting, so I said to my camera, that is to the audience, I said, ‘Would you like to hear the glacier melting?’, so I got the sound guy and we followed it and found a wee hole and we had a listen to the glacier and I think people will appreciate that.”

What did you think of Igloolik?

“Igloolik is bloody freezing, that’s what Igloolik is. It’s flat as a pancake…everything is flat round here…it’s so windswept, but it’s so beautifully kept. I went for a long walk, I went up to the graveyard and had a look around. I’m kind of hooked on graveyards, I don’t know why, I just find them interesting places to be and, it’s funny, it’s the same all over the world, people seem to die very young or very old everywhere…there’s children’s deaths…there’s a couple of teenagers, but the average I would say was 60…it’s a very harsh environment, that’s quite normal. “

What was it like hunting with the Inuit family?

“I went hunting with David and Maggie and Curtis and Eric and the baby…the baby lives in mama’s hood in the parker, and we had to go on David’s boat and it was very cold and…I was miserable. I wasn’t looking forward to it and I was miserable but I cheered up when we …went out on the boat to do a little hunting…we went out with the guns and the two sons, David and myself, and off we went and killed a seal.

“Which was remarkable; he was about the third or fourth seal we saw, and I personally wouldn’t kill a seal, but that’s neither here nor there, you know, I wouldn’t do a handstand either but nobody gives a sh*t about that. I understand totally why David kills seals and…it’s eaten…raw, and enjoyed immensely. Its eyes are eaten, its red bits and white bits. They shoot them, and I was uncomfortable, but I am uncomfortable with dead animals…even when I’m fishing, I don’t like killing a fish and I do sometimes do it and eat the fish but I am still uncomfortable with that.

“There is a discomfort and it’s like…the discomfort you get when you put a lobster in boiling water. No excuses are going to cover it, you either do it or you don’t and sometimes, in my case, you do it and then you never do it again, because you can’t stand the feeling. And in this case, the seal was a very beautiful creature, about the same size as a human. A small human being, and kind of, in the strangest of ways, behaved a bit like a human being when it was struggling at the side of the boat when it was gaffed, before it was shot again to stop it struggling.

“I was a bit uncomfortable with it and I knew I would be and David wasn’t the slightest bit uncomfortable with it and was delighted to see it and so were his family and they have great comfort. It was a very good day, I learned a lot about myself, I thought I had changed since I came here, I haven’t, I’m still a big, bleeding-heart, hippy liberal.

“I thought I’d become all Inuit and used to it and, ‘I understand,’ well I don’t understand at all, I don’t understand it in the bloody least. I get it, of course I do, and I am all for it, I am all for them being allowed to kill their quota of animals and carry on as they have done for centuries but, having said that…it was a real reminder of how the world actually works.

“Some people shoot things and some people go to the butchers and buy things. I’m the guy who goes to the butchers and they’re the people who shoot stuff, I think it’s as simple as that and it was hammered home to me and I felt kind of foolish, felt a wee bit foolish. I felt like a big silly townie dressed up, which of course I am, which of course I am most of my life and I don’t care.”

Didn’t you think the Inuit had bad teeth?

“Yeah, the teeth are in a terrible mess. The average person has…noticeably bad teeth…very badly positioned teeth. They could use a lot of dentistry up there, a lot of orthodontists would be great for the kids up here.

“There are a lot of people with a mangled look about their teeth…I don’t know whether it’s the diet or whatever, I don’t know what they’re doing but something in the tooth department needs a little attention. It would be nice to see it done, I think the Canadian government should look into that.

“They obviously are not horrified…I guess when so many of you have got crooked teeth it doesn’t really matter, but I think for their own good it would be much better. I have got a funny feeling it’s the modern diet that’s doing it…but there again part of me says, ‘If you’re happy with what you’ve got…’ and you won’t find me pointing at you saying, ‘You’re doing it wrong.’”

What did you think of Dawson City?

“It was nice colours and boardwalks and all that and it is nice in a funky kind of quaint way. It’s a cruel thing to say about a place, that it’s quaint. A lot of the Q’s are cruel like quirky, quaint, you know, but it was so beautiful from the helicopter, the little streets and boardwalks and wooden houses and all lovely colours, but it’s actually a sterile wee place.

“Its function has gone…the gold rush has gone, maybe the tourism makes it look different but the tourists had gone at the time of year I was there and so…a lot of the places are for sale and it’s a wee bit tumbleweed swept…but it has its charm and the people here seem to love it. But it’s not a place I would choose to live in.”

How was the gold digging with David Millar?

“The best. The best day, what a guy, just from the second we got there he was just full of enthusiasm and we went up to his open face placer mine - placer mining is loose, loose placer gold is loose gold that’s found in the ground, nuggets and bits and flakes and all that and it’s got loose from the ground by a high powered water hose.

“First there is a thing called overhang, which is the grass and leaves and roots, then there’s perma frost for a few feet and then there is a level of gravel, two or three feet of gravel, and then there is the bed rock, which is where the gold lives, and they have to wash all this stuff all down to get to the bed rock, and he let me do it.

“It’s a bit like one of those hoses they use to hose people who are rioting with, it was like that, it was the most immensely powerful feeling. Very uncomfortable because there was a hole in the hose and it was squishing the back of my legs, I was freezing. But I really enjoyed it. His enthusiasm just got me going…his personality changed as soon as I went near the gold I put my hand out and I leant towards it…this gold just changed the man…if you get towards this gold his hackles come up and it was surprising and highly entertaining but it wasn’t an act.

“Because these guys are working for months and months and months before they even start to filter down to where the gold is. They’re blasting and digging and lifting and dumping and washing and lifting and blasting and all that money is being spent, all the gas that it takes to operate the pumps and the water, at the end of the season they start to see what they’ve got filtered here and start to refine it. That’s the very end and the timing has to be absolutely brilliant because the winter is coming, they better do it quick before it slows and freezes everything up.

“And it’s such a joy. This guy’s enthusiasm just overflowed. He gave me a wee vial with some gold in it when I was finished, I really appreciated it, to have the wee bit of Yukon gold that I got in a Yukon gold mine. And I will treasure it forever because it was such an optimistic day.”

Tell me about your experience in the sweat lodge….

“I was looking forward to it, I’d seen it over the years in films and read about it and stuff and I thought, ‘God, I’d love to have a bash at that,’ because I like meditative things and I’ve done a few over the years but I was scared. I was full of trepidation about whether or not my body could stand it and I didn’t know how hard it got and how hot it got and I was worried that maybe they were physically different from me.

“The best thing was in the morning, I had to go down and choose the lava bricks with Keith, that were going to be heated up, it was all part of it, I had to choose and he had to choose but he pointed out to me good sizes and between us we got it. We went back and left them at the sweat lodge and then disappeared for lunch and came back. Various herbs were burned and smudged on me, blown on me and I had to get it in my hair and my body and it was wafted round me with a feather. And then a peace pipe, I actually had to smoke the pipe.

“And then they had a prayer where we were joined in a circle and it was to the great creator and Mother Earth and then into the lodge, and there was a pit in the middle and they got the red hot lava rocks from the fire and brought them in and piled them up and it was very hot and I thought, ‘Oh, it’s hot, but I can stand this, it’s good.’ And then they started pouring water on me, oh my god it was like being struck by lightening.

“He has a bucket with herbs water in it and a cedar branch…when they closed the doors…you can’t see…there’s total and absolute darkness except for the glow of the coals, but there isn’t enough glow to reflect on faces, you can’t see anything. You can hear people, but you can’t see a thing.

“And he prays in his own language and then he does it in English for my benefit, in the middle of the prayer he was pouring water on and immediately the heat is intense. And then, he did it four times. And I thought, ‘Oh God, I don’t know if I can stand this,’ and then it kept going, more and more intense and talking and praying and I didn’t think I could stand it and before I went in Herbie, who was on my right, had said, ‘If you are suffering from too much heat put your head to the floor and put your towel on your head and put your forehead to the floor, that’s the coolest place and so, so intense.’

“I’m listening and I’m getting off on the prayer and the kind of rhythm of it and then I hear Herbie going to the floor and I thought, ‘Yes.’ Not that I had outlasted Herbie but he would know that I’m not a wimp and it meant a lot to me .

“I opened the door and staggering out and the whole point of it is, you go in like a man and come out like a baby, you have to crawl out, steam belching off you and I felt a sense of achievement, not of sitting through the heat, but I actually made it to a sweat lodge. It’s a kind of achievement feeling about it.”

Tell me about when you saw the bear….

“It was like a teddy bear, it was so, so beautiful. We came round a bend and…he was already there. Gary said, ‘There’s maybe a bear around this corner,’ but because of this whirlpool we had to leap over he said it may startle him, which is exactly what happened. We arrived and the bear looked up and then he stood up on his hind legs. And I saw him and he was so sensational, like a big teddy bear face.

“It was hard to take seriously, I wanted to smile, he must have been seven feet on his hind legs and I think the camera man just got his ears before he took off, we saw little else, and then we turned around and went to do another run and as we turned around and jetted up we came around the corner to the right and there was a bear running, it was just sensational. It ran in a semi circle, it looked as if it was coming toward us and then it cut across and into the bushes and we got a lovely view of it and then we got up further and had some sandwiches and then drifted down again.

“We came round and there it was this Grizzly bear on a log, looking for fish. It saw us but it wasn’t sure what we were. It was a beautiful thing it walked along three or four logs. I was happy. There is something wonderful about seeing a big thing in its own territory, in its own world, being a wild beast. There is something deeply impressive that it can hunt that well.

“This big muscley bear, a big hairy arsed bear going along the rocks like that. It’s just so brilliant. There is something extraordinary about these animals, that can stand to live in such an extraordinary climate, they can survive in it, sleep through the winter and go through all those things it has to do. Building itself up to survive. And the salmon, the sock-eyed salmon were going up the river and they are neon red with a green head and a green tail, like designer fish…hundreds of them up the river and that’s what the bears are into, they like to eat the brain and the roe...and there are so many…and the eagles all love the flesh… what a country, just booming with these things…I was very happy.”

Tell me about some of the people you met along the way - the fishermen in Nova Scotia, Bobby and Ralph...

“It was a delightful day in the hands of two extraordinary fishermen from Nova Scotia who used to be full time fishermen and now are part of the tourist industry taking oafs like me jigging for carp and I caught one and I was delighted.

“I love catching but I loved being in the company of this dying species of man. There are no more banks of Newfoundland to fish on and that’s where they made their living. A very hard living it was and along came the factory ships and blew the whole thing away.

“But I have never been so close to cod fishermen and I found them both to be delightful, warm, nice human beings - one of whom had actually been in a huge tragedy where five of his friends were killed on the icy waters of 35 below freezing, being rescued by helicopters and all that. But you would never have known unless you had squeezed it out of him, which I did, he wasn’t a bragger, he was just an ordinary guy getting on. The salt of the earth, people that I love who have done extraordinary things and they had a nice point of view on how it could be fixed and where it went wrong. They were very honest about where it went wrong and they were delighted to go fishing with me and be funny and nice and we talked about everything from mackerel to Viagra and it was a delight to be in their company and it was a delight to have them on camera and show the world that not only are they the people who fish, not only are they just delightful granddad people, but they’re not made of leather and they don’t go around in yellow oil skins all day.

“They were men with big strong hands and they have great warmth and they are big softies. And it’s lovely to show that, it’s great to be given the opportunity to show the world, to show that they are just like your uncles and your granddad, they are exactly the same. They take the big woolly pullover off when they come home and they are just another granddad; it’s a delight.’

“I love to hear about their diet, the way they would rather eat fish than steak, you would think a guy who had been fishing all day would rather eat steak, but low and behold they wouldn’t thank you for a steak, they would rather have a piece of cod and some potatoes. And it’s just lovely finding the most ordinary of things, because I think, within ordinariness, there is beauty. Things don’t need to be extraordinary to be beautiful, there is deep beauty within ordinariness and plainness and a lack of desire for rich and sparkliness. There is a great beauty that lies in peoples’ eyes and lies in their hearts and souls and it’s lovely to be part of it.”

Tookie - the Inuit who watches Eskimo film all day in museum...

“Tookie, a sad wee man…this little man goes and sits in the museum and watches a film of the Inuit when it was okay to call them Eskimo and he watches a lovely, lovely film of them with the dog teams and he knows them all and he was telling me who was dead among them. The thing that was so profound for me was everybody looked so happy, in a way they don’t look here. But having said that, maybe it’s because they were on film. They just looked complete in their clothes, in their seal skin and the hooded garments…they just looked comfortable and they knew who and what they were.

“They had the dog teams pulling sleds and they were all pulling and laughing and helping and Tookie was watching and he started to tell me and I said, ‘Do you know these?’, ‘Oh yeah,’ he said, ‘They’re mostly dead.’ And I felt so sad for him because down there, it can’t be good for him to go and relive that, he goes once a week apparently and watches his past that doesn’t exist any more and…they are so happy looking and he lives in a Salvation Army hostel here, I don’t know what is going through his head but it can’t be joyous.”

Rebecca – Inuit chef...

“It was such a joy, her aim in life is to make her fellow Inuit people eat better, the old way, eat caribou and whale and seal and she does her cooking programme and she’s so nice. She sings when she’s doing it and she thanks the blender, ‘Thank you, machine.’

“I thought, ‘Oh God, this is great.’ And she made hamburger from caribou and maktak soup, which is whale, beluga whale, delicious, a bit like squid…slightly rubbery when you taste it and then as soon as you chewed it it became this other thing it…was delicious with veggies and wee bit of noodles in it. And the caribou was just caribou and onion and egg. And it was just sensationally good food made well.

“You know, that Buddhist thing, if you put love into it, love comes out of it, it’s a thing I learned a long time ago, and she had it in spades and we had a lovely time together. We instantly liked each other and had a nice time but it wasn’t until it was over, there was a little poster on the wall and her daughter told me she’s a comedian as well, she’s an Inuit comedian and does television…in their language and she’s a comedian I thought, ‘How great,’ you know.”

Abraham - the Inuit Elder...

“Abraham was a delight. There is a lovely thing about old men, calm old men who accept being old men and so calmly accept the wisdom that comes with it. It’s a joy and it reminded me very much of old men I knew when I was a boy... they had that lovely calm wisdom of men who had been in wars and Abraham had that, men who had fought walruses and whales and seals and just a calm acceptance.

“He’s a very small man in stature, a wee man with big hands, big strong manly hands. He had a ready laugh, a wonderful wonderful laugh and his son-in-law was driving the boat and he got him to translate it and then he said in a very clear little voice, ‘How old are you?’ and I said, ’65,’ he said, ‘I am 72,’ and I said, ‘That’s good, Abraham,’ and we both burst out laughing for reasons that none of us knew and…he just filled my heart with joy.

“I said, ‘How’s your average day as an elder?’ and he pointed to his chair where he sits with his back to the window and he pointed and he sits in his chair and receives people and he’s very glad to, he’s very accepting of his position as an elder and his wisdom. He’s ready to share and people come in and ask him things and he answers them and sends them on their way and I loved his casual calm acceptance of his great role.

“And he would touch me every now and again and he said the most beautiful thing to me in his house, he said, ‘I feel as if I’ve known you for a long time, I feel as if we’ve been friends for a long time,’ and then as we were leaving his house he said, ‘You are my friend.’ And I thought, ‘I am indeed and you’re mine.’

Atuat – the lady who makes seal skin suits...

“Atuat was brilliant, she works really hard and has done all her life and was describing to me how she makes clothing from seal skin and caribou and…she was so impressive, the work is so hard, beyond belief hard. Physically hard. She had these tools, these scraping tools where she scrapes the insides of these animal skins

“It’s a hard, hard coating and she was scraping at it…and as she was scraping you could see it getting lighter and softer, then she moved on to another tool to scrape even further and then they dampen it, fold it, do it again, do it again.

“She chewed on it to soften it…biting on the actual material, biting it, folding it, biting it, and her teeth are all worn down and in a kind of semi circle and she said, ‘We can’t get the young people to do it any more. They do it by hammering it.’ And I thought, ‘Yeah, too right they do.’

And she made such a stunning job of it, she made me this seal skin suit and caribou boots with a seal skin over the boots and duffle socks.

“They’ve been doing it for hundreds, thousands of years and they’re awfully good at it and with very very good reasons as well and I look on it as art. And I am proud to have met her.”

James – fisherman...

“James, the Inuit man, took me fishing first of all. He put his nets out and we caught all these huge fish in his net, fed them to his sled dogs, each of them got a fish that size and ate it. We’ve got a shot of the tail going down and they’re just proper dogs. It was just one of those magical mornings.

“He said, ‘I’m going to take them back, feed the dogs and put some in the smoker.’ He said, ‘Do you know how we smoke fish?’ And he just lifts a big log up and he said, ‘This is the wood we use. It’s soft enough’. He fished the other wood there. It’s free. It’s free and earned...and then away to the biggest walk-in fridge in the world, 30ft down, along. Carved by hand by his grandfather and his friends. It was a deep 30 feet down and then along the caverns, made of solid ice with rooms off it. There are passageways right and left and forward and rooms, maybe 10 by 10 feet and about seven feet high, maybe of solid ice, where he keeps two seals and a big mountain of fish.

“It was just so brilliant and he was just such a gas man, such an iron man. We went back, had lunch at his house, we had maktak and smoked fish and turkey soup. It was living like a king.

“There’s something quite holy about the whole affair, something very real and I hope I don’t sound middle class and pretentious I just thought, ‘This is lovely’. This is real, this is a moment.”


The series will be released on DVD on 16th March 2009, featuring an extra episode.