THE CLUNES PROGRAMME

My friend Patricia Gray, of Synergy Publishing, who visited our beautiful islands last summer (not for the last time, I hope) has expressed her displeasure, in the columns of "The Shetland Times", over the first of the ITV series in which the comic actor Martin Clunes has embarked on a whistle stop tour of Britain's remote islands, ostensibly to explore the psychology of isolation which, in mainland peoples' eyes, must attend our remoteness from the rest of the British population. In the course of the Shetland part of his odyssey, he met in with various people, most of whom were incomers, and at least one of whom, Stuart Hill, is an even bigger clown than he is.

She says that she hopes I didn't see it. I didn't. I think I was watching the coincident snooker, or rather I was working, with the snooker as a backdrop to what I was doing at the time. I avoided the "Islands" programme, as I knew it would contain little to enlighten or entertain me. Despite the gravitas attached to the broadcast in the Radio Times, I knew that this was merely a vehicle for the self-promotion and bank balance maintenance of a TV celebrity.

The programme has excited very little attention in the media here, and Patricia's was the only letter in the "Reader's Views" column of the "The Shetland Times" to refer to it at all. My mother watched "Islands" and hated it, probably because she is unfamiliar with Mr Clunes' television output, and expected something more scholarly.

But "sooth-moothers" have been talking tosh about these islands since time immemorial, and somehow the sun still rises in the morning and sets in the evening. Shetlanders still go to work each day to earn a pretty reasonable living for themselves and their families. Smoking-jacket-clad TV personalities, complaining about the smell in gannet colonies, present no problem either to the gannets or the islanders. A much more real threat is posed by the agendas of single-interest city-based pressure groups, who care not a whit whether Shetlanders make a living or not, as long as the subject of their focus is promoted, now apparently with the support of the Scottish Parliament. Anyone who wishes to deny us the right to put Shetland produce on our tables, and to earn a living from what has always been our most precious resource, the sea, is a far greater obstacle to the prosperity of these islands than clowns like Clunes. Another real issue is the oppressive over-regulation emanating from Europe. Patricia mentions the naturalist Kate Humble (whom I had the pleasure of meeting in the Queen's Hotel a few years back), but she has no more interest in the welfare of Shetlanders than Clunes does.

I harbour no ill-feeling towards "sooth-moothers" and some of my best friends hail from outside these islands. I have always enjoyed their company, and appreciate the contribution they make towards our economy and society. However, when they arrive, as some do, with a colonial attitude, seeking to alter the customs and practices of those damned unwashed natives, my hackles start to rise. And I don't like myself with risen hackles - I go around muttering to myself uncharacteristically, and thinking thoughts that I would rather not think.

People who seek to use Shetland as a marketing tool for their own produce are another threat to the future prosperity of these islands. Entrepreneurs have arrived in the sooth mooth to set up shop selling Shetland Wiener schnitzel, Shetland pate a foie gras and Shetland blueberry pie, not to mention liquor with an advertised Shetland content which, as far as we can tell, does not even amount to fresh air.

The "Islands" programme will leave us no worse than we were before. It may even encourage more visitors, who might just stumble upon a genuine Shetland product to buy during their stay in "isolation". Apparently Clunes met Steven Spence, who is a genuine Unst man, and, as to the other people he encountered on his visit, it is natural that one clown should gravitate towards another.

I hope Patricia and I are still friends after she's read this post in response to her "Shetland Times" letter. She has always encouraged frankness from me, and this is it. We regard the islands from different standpoints. I look upon them as a native Shetlander, with my concerns towards future generations of islanders, while she looks at the place primarily from the standpoint of landscape, nature and wildlife. The two interests should not be mutually exclusive, but, in the end, it should be Shetlanders who decide the future of their own islands.