by Robson Green
Mike is completely uninterested in my stories and I miss Jim the Joker. He was my type of guy – laughed at anything.
It’s three o’clock when we arrive back at the creek. The tide is in and everyone thinks this is now the place to hook a striped bass. I’m determined to be the first to get one. But as the light starts to fade, none of us has caught a single fish. I’ve been thrashing the water for six hours, my hand is blistered and it looks like the bass have buggered off.
‘Where’s the bass, Mike?’ I yell.
Mike and his mates conclude that we have missed them and they will already have travelled south. Defeated, we head back to the hotel. On the way we pass a psychic’s ‘salon’. Jamie and I look at one another. It’s time for drastic measures. We are now willing to try anything.
The Clairvoyant
The next morning I find out that Dad is being released from hospital. He’s got to have a stent fitted and possibly undergo a bypass but at the moment, owing to flu-like symptoms and a kidney infection, he’s not well enough for surgery but he is well enough to go home. I can’t wait to see him. Perhaps the lady I am seeing next will tell me exactly when that will be.
We walk into the psychic salon and meet Tammy the psychic. I shake hands with the buxom blonde, who is a cross between Doris Day and Kirstie Alley at the height of her drink and junkfood problem. She looks into my eyes, still holding my hand, and no word of a lie says, ‘How’s your father?’ I gasp. Now, on reflection of her subsequent bonkers behaviour, I’ve taken this to possibly be less a comment about Dad’s heart attack and more a how’s-yer-father, nudge-nudge, wink-wink, fancy-a-bit scenario. Either way, this whole psychic thing is playing tricks on my mind. We sit down at a table and Tammy reads my palms, her tarot cards and my mind. She looks into my eyes seductively.
‘Robson, I honestly believe, on this journey, you are in a location where you are destined to be, but you’re not in the right spot. There is a spot and you will find what you are searching for. You’re going to become a winner – you always have been, and you always will be. You’re a lover, not a fighter. You will succeed in what you’re looking for.’
I only hear the words ‘winner’ and ‘lover’.
Robson: ‘Tammy, can I ask you a question?’
Tammy: ‘Sure, sugar.’
Robson: ‘Will you be my agent? No one has ever said those things to me. And if not my agent, will you marry me?’
Quick as a flash she gives me her ring.
Tammy: ‘Yes, here’s a ring. Just put it on me.’
I suddenly realise I’m in unchartered and dangerous waters here. She wants my number . . . so I give her Jonathan’s. Thinking it’s mine, she clutches it to her enormous bosoms. What on earth have I done? You haven’t bloody thought it through again, that’s what, cranks up my inner monologue. You have just asked a lonely woman of a certain age to marry you and she doesn’t see it as a joke; she thinks you are her white knight finally come to free her from the shackles of perpetual loneliness and suffering, like Prometheus bound to the mountain every day, an eagle pecking at her liver. And then you ride into town and offer her a glimpse of hope to break the bonds and stop the pain. You bloody fool, you’ve really gone and done it now.
Tammy ends her reading by saying: ‘You are not catching fish because the fish have moved. You need to follow the fish.’
Jamie: ‘That’s brilliant – she’s a genius.’
‘I could have told you that!’
But Jamie is already out the door shouting, ‘Follow the fish!’
Back at the hotel it’s all hands on deck as we plot where the fish have gone and how we’re going to locate them. Mike and his gang think they have moved to Manhattan, and that’s exactly where Jamie wants to go. I’m not so sure it’s a good idea but he wants to shoot the unfolding story of us trying to track down these elusive stripers. Jamie calls Hamish in Glasgow, who thinks it’s a brilliant idea, so it’s settled: we’re going to New York.
‘Are we going to fly there?’ I ask.
Jamie: ‘No. We are going by van.’
Robson: ‘What? But it’s miles!’
Jamie: ‘No, it’s less than an inch on the map.’
Robson: ‘Jamie, this is America!’
I am reminded that there is no money left in the budget because of me. I shut up.
Jonathan’s phone rings. He answers. It’s Tammy-the-psychic trying to get hold of me! I signal that I am not here, shaking my head vigorously. He tells her I’m unavailable. She calls back a few more times but by late afternoon the calls have stopped, and we think she has got the message that I don’t really want to marry her.
Later that evening we wander down to the hotel bar to get a few drinks and something to eat. Standing in the lobby is Tammy. Before she sees me, I turn and leg it up the stairs, leaving Jonathan to deal with her, again. She tells him she really needs to talk to me. Jonathan tells her I’m not here. She says that’s not true because she’s been waiting out in her car and she knows I haven’t left the building. She’s been staking me out! Jonathan finally persuades her to go and we hit the bar. It has slightly freaked me out but then I think, if she’d been any good at clairvoyance, she should always have been ahead of me. Now that would be scary.
The next day we embark on a nine-hour road trip to New York in a van. I’m dreading it but it actually turns out to be one of the nicest journeys I have had. We really bond as a team, stopping to eat burgers and nachos and all kinds of other really bad junk food, and singing songs. We are all squished in – well, they are. I am at the front, of course. It’s the Extreme boy band on tour.
The next morning, our new striped bass expert finds us in the restaurant of the hotel having breakfast.
‘They’re here,’ says Tooch in a sharp Bronx accent.
He looks like a character out of The Sopranos. We head over with him to Sandy Hook Bay and meet his friend Brian. It’s very early but these guys are wide awake and bang up for action. As we head out across the sparkling water on a small speedboat, the hazy silhouette of New York’s skyline unfolds in front of us like a giant poster . . . Wow. It’s awesome to be here, especially as Brian tells me we are definitely going to catch striped bass today. Brian receives a text from another local fisherman: the bite is on and we’re heading at full-throttle to the spot. We have found the fishing G-Spot, as foretold by the Boston stalker, and I’m excited about going in for a tackle against the Alan Shearer of the ocean.
The birds are feeding and the bass are here in their thousands. Unlike trying to catch the bass on the fly, as I did with Mike (even though they were here all the bleeding time), today we’re not taking any chances. We are sinking lines and using toby lures to try to tempt the fish. Brian says that if we want to eat tonight this is the most practical method – there’s no time for purist sentiment on this boat, I want me a striped bass! If dynamite were another option I’d have gone for that as well.
Ten minutes later Tooch has a striper on the end of his line. The camera crew and I are ecstatic. Brian and Tooch are taken aback by our reaction. Tooch’s fish has to go back, as the legal size is twenty-eight inches, but it’s a stunner, a piscatorial zebra.
At last I get a bass on the end of my line as well. It fights like a rainbow trout, as it’s strong, fast and likes to run. It’s crucial I keep my line tight and don’t put too much drag on it or the fish will come off. After a couple of runs, including one under the boat, the fish tires and I reel him in. He shoots! He scores! He lands a bass! Sadly it’s too small to keep so I have to release it, but what a stunner. It’s like a skipjack tuna but stretched. Under the water they appear dark green but in the light you can see the black and white curved stripes. I pop it back. I don’t mind; I’m one very happy fisherman.
With the Empire State Building in the background, it’s a fantastic end to a fantastic trip. Don’t go to New York for the shopping – go for the fishing.
A week later, back in the UK, Dad is as right as rain. I visit him at his
huge eight-berth caravan near Bamborough Castle, where he lives with his girlfriend of seven years, Yvonne. He loves the outdoors and would have had us all growing up in a caravan if he’d had his way.
‘Are you taking it easy, Dad?’
‘Yes, Robo. I’m drinking less, which is a bloody shame but I did have a swift pint at the Black Bull last night with Plum. First time out since the attack, mind. Plum says to me: “Big Rob, your lad’s never off the TV.” I said: “I know, we call it interference.”’
Chapter Six
THE PHILIPPINES
Robson Crusoe
February 2009, Series 2
Hamish Barbour and I are enjoying a good lunch at the Two Fat Ladies in Glasgow, talking about the possibilities of Series 2. We gulp more wine and come up with a few ideas, Hamish as excitable as ever. I regard him across the table – he looks like a Swan Vestas match, with his tight red hair and pale lean body from all those triathlons he does at the weekends. The comparison suits his personality, too. He ignites all the programme ideas by slowly getting the wet logs (the TV suits) to light up about something, anything. It’s an unenviable task and he almost burns himself out trying to get them to finally spark. I suppose Hamish is a creative firestarter; if he had crazier hair and Keith from The Prodigy had an eating disorder, they could be twins.
‘What about Robson Crusoe?’ says Hamish, combusting, ‘You are cast away for twenty-four hours and have to survive on your own, using all the skills you’ve learnt to feed yourself from the ocean?’
‘Fantastic! But maybe I should do it for seventy-two hours because I have learnt a lot, Hamish. I think I really would be fine for that amount of time. A bit loopy, granted, but fine. I’ve been watching a lot of Ray Mears, which should come in handy.’
‘Great. Great. Twenty-four hours will be fine, Robson. I’ll get Helen Nightingale [the series producer] to set it up. [To the waiter] Can we have the bill, please?’
The NeverEnding Journey
The Extreme team and I are travelling 7,000 miles to the 7,107-island archipelago of the Philippines, on the western edge of the Pacific Ocean. It’s a three-day journey and Jamie Goold wants to film the first few minutes of the show on my diary cam. He says I’m not to shave because I need to film the intensity of the journey and its effect on me. Well, thanks, Jamie. It’s the first time I’ve thought ‘Fuck me, I’m middle-aged’ and it’s depressing. I’m entering the autumn of my years but today it looks like bleak midwinter. Jamie, Craig Herd (a Kiwi cameraman), and Peter Prada, the soundman who from this point on becomes part of the Extreme Fishing furniture, are with me on this odyssey. We travel via three different planes, each getting progressively smaller, until the smallest finally takes us to Manila. It’s a terrifying flight and I’m glad it’s over.
As we drive through the capital in a brightly painted minibus I realise that we couldn’t be any more conspicuous. The city is a chaotic mixture of traffic, noise and humidity. Thousands of tuk-tuks, all beeping, zoom down the streets, there are minibuses crammed full of people, high-rise flats line either side of the road, and there is a hot, damp smell of fuel, drains and people. Every time we stop in traffic, the locals stare at us. It’s a place where you need to look like you know where you are going, because if you don’t, urban predators will smell your fear. This is a Third World country with Third World problems, including great poverty, corruption and violent crime, and because of that we have a team of security guys to look after us and they are tooled up to the max. I later find out that the kidnapping of Westerners for ransom is fairly common.
As we approach the edge of the city, Jamie reveals that he wants to film the rest of the journey with me travelling in a tuk-tuk behind the van. So while the rest of the crew are sitting in relative luxury, I am forced to endure a three-hour noisy and very bumpy journey to the coast southeast of Manila. It’s like taking a motorised chair from Newcastle to Liverpool. When we finally arrive, my bottom is numb and I’m feeling cranky but it’s straight onto a boat for another three hours, heading to our final destination: the teardrop island of Siargao in Surigao del Norte province in the Philippines Sea.
It’s an open-topped boat and we’ve barely left port when it starts to pee it down. We are not prepared – no one is. Even though we are filming a TV show, the fixer has overlooked the fact that we would have all of our camera equipment with us. In order to save the thousands of pounds’ worth of recording equipment, we are forced to surrender our waterproofs and get soaked through. It’s like a hairy wet T-shirt competition on board. I feel sick. Apparently it rains a lot here. Maybe staying on a desert island for twenty-four hours is not such a good idea, I think. Rubbish, it’ll be fine, you big Jessie, replies the other voice within.
*
Siargao is a tropical paradise, white sand and a clear blue sea, as well as dense mangrove forest and wetlands that help protect costal areas from erosion and storm surge. We are staying at one of the Philip pines’ best-kept secrets, the Pansukian Tropical Resort. This place is so amazing and opulent that even the president stays here. I’m staying in his room, aptly named the Presidential Suite, where there’s enough space to swing a cat, a dog and a bleeding horse, and all the crew’s ‘quarters’ are the same: absolutely massive. It’s been well worth the ball-breaking effort to get here. I clean my teeth and look in the mirror. I am dishevelled and look so much like my dad, who has thankfully now made a full recovery and is back up to flying speed. Why do we have to perish and decay? I wonder. Still, at least with age some other things have improved, like my monobrow now being consigned to the past. I didn’t even know I had one until I started dating Vanya. Pretty much after our first date she attacked me with tweezers. I used to look like Frida Khalo and didn’t even know it.
Before Tweezers
After Tweezers
With that thought in mind, I crawl into bed and black out.
*
I wake up at 6 a.m. and walk outside onto the verandah. The ocean is twenty metres from my door, iron flat and turquoise, with only beach between us. Men, women and kids are fishing in bancas, traditional dugout canoes with crude bamboo outriggers to keep them stable. They are all using basic hand line methods, about a dozen of them floating in the shallows pulling up fish. It’s wonderful to see, but these families are not fishing as a hobby – it’s a way of life and they need to put food on the table. Jobs are hard to come by in the area and people live off the land as well as the ocean, growing rice and breeding animals. To most people here, every day is about survival.
Junior
I meet Junior Gonzalez, one of the finest fishermen on the island, I’m told. There are loads of fish here and they are varied but, as I discover, they are very small. The locals either eat them or sell them at the market. Junior has no technology to help him catch fish, no GPS, no sounder, no mobile phone, no two-way radio and not even a compass. He does what families have done for generations in Siargao: he relies on his knowledge of the stars, landmarks, tides, the weather and the moon. He also uses bird life to guide the boat, knowing certain species never fly far from the shore, and high birds or feeding birds mean fish. Low-flying birds, skimming the waves, tend to be just passing through, using the air from the waves to save energy on their journey.
Junior has fished like this since he was a little boy. He appears to be around sixty years of age but could be younger; he has a face that is well lived-in. We head out on Junior’s banca, which looks more like a tourist river boat that he’s hurriedly converted into a fishing vessel by putting a couple of pipes on it to hold rods and the odd plank to rest your feet against. Junior’s sixteen-year-old son, Grieshan, is in another banca and to be honest I’ve got ship envy. His is way better.
Junior starts the engines. It sounds like a cross-channel ferry – the fish will hear us coming from about twenty-two miles away – and I stick my fingers in my ears. We get a gentle speed up but the boat is all over the place, rocking and lurching. Thankfully it doesn’t matter too much today as we’r
e staying 500 metres from the shore, but tomorrow we’ll be travelling to the Philippine Trench. I hope he’s got a bigger boat. At a maximum known depth of 6.54 miles, the trench is the third-deepest body of water in the world, the deepest being the Mariana Trench, near Guam, which is 6.86 miles deep. It’s mind-blowing stuff, like considering the size of the universe and what it all means when you’re really, really tired. It’s so much to ponder that it makes me feel queasy. But then again, that’s probably just Junior’s crappy boat.
We try to fish from the diesel-glugging beast but to no avail. I look over the way – young Grieshan is hauling them in. I suggest, very strongly, that we change boats, and my request is granted. As we head back to shore, Junior tells me a story of the time he went out with Grieshan, aged four, to catch a swordfish. Swordfish are nocturnal deepwater fish so are caught at night when they come up to feed on squid. He was forty miles out over the Philippine Trench in an oversized canoe with a toddler and no GPS, radio or phone, in the middle of the night, when the mother of all storms hits. Storms in this area tend to come very fast and out of nowhere. Junior and Grieshan are tossed about in their banca until it’s eventually smashed to smithereens and sinks. Never letting go of his son’s hand for one second, he flings Grieshan on his back and, clinging to a piece of wood, begins to slowly swim and float to shore. Since that day they have been inseparable. It’s an amazing tale that completely blows Life of Pi out of the water.
I switch boats.
‘This one’s much better, Junior!’ I say.
He smiles. It’s quieter, too, which is what we need to catch coral reef species and pelagic fish that live near the surface of the ocean, not the bottom. We’re hoping for wahoo or maya maya (red snapper) to come our way. The red snapper is a beautiful red fish, which strangely makes it an excellent predator, because in the underwater spectrum of light, red isn’t seen, so the fish is almost invisible.
