Britain’s best-loved TV anglers saw rather more of Perthshire than they bargained for when they filmed their Hogmanay special during some of the worst flooding in recent memory.
Bob Mortimer and Paul Whitehouse arrived on the October weekend when torrential rain brought death and destruction to the region.
As rivers across Perthshire flooded and burst their banks, the pair and their crew had to flit from site to site in their quest for somewhere safe enough to film.
The results of their adventures will be screened next Friday when the Mortimer and Whitehouse: Gone Fishing Hogmanay episode is aired on BBC2.
Claire Mercer Nairne, of Meikelour Fishings near Coupar Angus, is looking forward to seeing the outcome.
“I’m sure the local community will love it,” she said.
“Things didn’t go as planned but we all had great fun.”
“And the programme isn’t really about catching fish,” she added.
“It’s about finding the enjoyment in life on the river.
So it was actually perfect.”
Third time lucky for Gone Fishing Hogmanay crew
The plans for the Hogmanay episode had been nearly a year in the making.
Bob Mortimer and Paul Whitehouse were keen to return to Meikleour after shooting a particularly moving episode of Gone Fishing there five years ago.
In it, the pair met the late John Moses, a popular River Tay angler who died soon after filming.
This time round the plan was to fish on the Isla.
Show-makers visited and found the perfect spot.
And it was all going so well. Until the heavens opened.
“Our tractor man had been to the river bank and got it all looking camera-ready,” said Claire.
“It was beautiful, perfect.
“And then we got there and found it under a metre of water.”
The flooding, which would later claim the life of a Perthshire landowner and cause millions of pounds worth of damage to properties in Perth, rendered the Isla unsuitable and unsafe.
“The river was completely flooded,” recalled Claire.
“The crew were all getting stuck in the mud. It was hopeless. So we decided to make for the River Tay.”
By the time they arrived there, filming was also out of the question.
“The Tay was starting to fill,” said Claire. “It was rising too fast.”
So the stars, production crew – and Ted the dog – all piled into their vehicles again and made for the River Erricht.
Here, conditions were far from perfect, but – with the river rising around them by the second – they managed to hang around for long enough to get the crucial scenes in the can.
Warm memories of a wet weekend
The October 7-8 flood was a dramatic episode for the Meikleour estate.
The business’s tattie boxes became an unlikely symbol of the weekend as observers photographed them bobbing downriver.
The crates contained broccoli before they – and the riverbank they were stacked on – were swept away by the force of the flood water.
Many have since resurfaced up and down the east coast, including one which made it as far as Northumberland.
Claire said she was grateful to the Gone Fishing Hogmanay team for leaving Meikleour with such warm memories from such a difficult time.
“We had our Hogmanay at the Meikelour Arms in October,” she said.
“There was a piper, a Christmas tree and everyone had a lovely time.
“It’s nice to have something good to come out of that weekend.”
• The Mortimer and Whitehouse Gone Fishing Hogmanay special is on BBC2 on Friday December 29 at 9pm.
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