by Robson Green
‘It’s a grouper! I have always wanted to catch one of these!’
It’s the biggest fish of the day and in my opinion the second-finest-tasting fish on the planet, after haddock. Its Ancient Greek name is Epinephelus lanceolatus (epinephelos meaning ‘clouds’) and its striking brown and grey markings do make it look as though it’s reflecting the altocumulus clouds in the sky above. This fish with clouds on will bring a good price at the market, and in all we have eighteen of them. We later sell them on the beach to the locals for the going rate: 400 shillings a fish (under £3). It’s a good day’s work – my dad would be proud that I’d done at least one decent day’s graft with scars to prove it.
Tana River Delta
I cannot believe the pilot of our plane, Gary Cullen, is best mates with the headmaster of my son’s school! The clichés gush out of my mouth: ‘It’s such a small world, Gary. I mean, here we are on the way to the Tana Delta talking about people in Surrey! Unbelievable.’
The crew groan and stick their earplugs in. They think I’m such a twat today. Sod them. I natter away and Gary asks if I would like to have a go at flying. Would I? Would I? I smile from ear to ear: ‘I have always wanted to be a pilot but I didn’t have the aptitude skills or leadership qualities to join the Royal Air Force.’ I once had to take five guys to a river with three planks and rope to build a bridge to cross it. The way I constructed the bridge ensured all five lads were swept away, with me standing on the bank wondering what to do next. We also had to lay a minefield, but first of all I didn’t ask if any of the guys had done it before, which is a glaringly obvious mistake as one was an expert. Secondly, I didn’t work out that it would be best to place all the mines on top of the ground before we dug them in and risked detonating them while trying to plant the others.
After a quick lesson, I take us to 11,000 feet. The Tana Delta is stunning from above: this is where the sea comes inland and forms an estuary and hundreds of little tributaries that bleed off it. I am reluctant to give the controls back to Gary but he insists on landing the plane, apparently because it’s windy, we’re landing on a sandy beach and, er, I’ve never done it before.
The crew still think I’m a twat: ‘Oh, my God, I can’t believe you know John Whatshisface. Such a small world,’ they mimick.
We have dinner and go to bed. My room, a very smart colonial jungle tent, has no walls and 360 degrees of views and fresh air. There are only mosquito nets to protect me, which won’t help against lions, hippos and other big beasts. I don’t sleep a wink with all the wildlife noises, particularly the hippopotami feeding nearby. One of the most dangerous animals in the world, and the most dangerous mammal in Africa, it’s not a beast you want to piss off – but in only a matter of hours I will be casting a small bait fish over a pod of hippos’ heads and landing it into their dung in the hope of catching a larger fish. No, I haven’t been drinking: that’s my brief and I can hardly digest it myself and nor, from the sound of it, can the hippos. It’s like a cacophony of dishwashers on drainage cycle.
As the sun rises we head off in a 4x4 with my guide, Keke, to a tiny village on Tana River. Here we’re meeting the fishermen who risk their lives every day because of how and where they fish. It’s the first time I’ve been on a fishing trip with a chap carrying a .303 rifle. Sporting an army green shirt, trousers and a kufi cap, this geezer looks the business. We walk in single file along the bank of one of the thousands of tributaries in the Delta and scramble down the sides to the water’s edge. Five metres in front of me is a pod of hippos trying to wallow, snooze and defecate in peace. Bait fish like nothing more than chomping on hippo poo and where there are bait fish, there are predators. I cast a line as near to the pod as possible. This is extreme hippo-poo fishing. Only in Africa; only on this show.
I have to admit I am more than a little cynical, but as I bring the line in by hand I have a take. It’s a small red snapper but I am happy. I ask Keke what ‘beautiful fish’ is in Swahili.
‘Samaki Mazuri,’ he says, grinning at the size of it.
Well, he can laugh but four hours later it’s the only fish we have and I am more likely to be bored to death than gored to death. I spy a man in a dugout canoe catching loads, so I decide to ditch my two losers and hang out with him. Call me fickle.
Swab and his son take us upriver in their battered canoe to a secret location supposed to be full of fish, and most importantly away from hippos – the temperature is rising and they’re becoming agitated. As we pass by, two of them scramble to their feet looking menacing, while the others scatter and dive under the water. I conclude that I’d prefer to watch them from the bank, not a canoe. The sun is baking and the chance of catching a fish remote. My gut instinct is to call it a day but Swab sets out crab lines – in my experience shrimp and crabs are always a last resort of a contributor. Well, after all the faffing about with poo and hippos we end up with one tiny crab, which looks like something I pulled out of a rock pool in Seahouses aged seven, a small bream and a red snapper. I cook them on the fire and eat them with all the other poo fishermen. It’s a poo-tiful scene.
Lake Victoria
Gary’s back and he’s taking us inland to Lake Victoria, the second-largest freshwater lake in the world and bigger than Wales. However, this time I’m allowed nowhere near the controls of the plane. When the production company, IWC Media, found out I’d flown, they went ballistic.
‘You are not insured. We are not amused,’ said Hamish.
All the crew got into trouble so I am straightjacketed onto the plane and seated at the back, where I can’t touch anything. The fact that I had always wanted to be a pilot isn’t a good enough excuse to bend the health and safety rules in IWC’s eyes, the killjoys.
After one aborted landing owing to a cow on the ‘runway’, we touchdown on a bumpy field where kids are playing football. When we’ve all coughed our tongues up, we head by boat to Mfangano Island in the middle of Lake Victoria.
Local fisherman Gilbert is waiting to meet us. He is a charming man with a kind manner. He welcomes us to his fishing village, which comprises square mud-and-wood huts with crude corrugated roofs. Children run around naked at the water’s edge as mothers wash their clothes and cooking pots. Men busy themselves with carpentry and repairing boats ready for tonight’s fishing. The lifeblood of the island is omena fish (think white-bait), which the locals catch and sell on the mainland.
As we set foot onto land, the little children rush over to greet us. Scores of them appear from nowhere and I high-five to greet them. It quickly becomes apparent that there are many more kids on the island than grown-ups, as many of these youngsters’ parents have been casualties of the AIDS epidemic. According to Kenya’s National AIDS Control Council, there are around 1.5–1.7 million people living with HIV out of a population of 43 million. It’s eye-opening to see the effects of the disease so clearly here; in some cases grandparents are looking after twenty children.
I have a few hours to kill so I teach the kids the Extreme Fishing mime, where you cross your arms in an X, cast out a line and reel in the fish. It’s become shorthand for the show and we are beginning to use it in the opening title sequences more and more.
Gilbert asks if I’m hungry and the crew nod their heads eagerly. He takes us to meet a lady called Paulina in the woods behind the village. She is dressed in a black and white patterned dress and a headscarf tied at the back to keep the sun off. She is waving a big cake bowl around her head, humming a tune, surrounded by a cloud of flies attracted by the resonance. Inside the bowl is a gloopy mixture that the flies stick to. These flies are the other main source of food on the island; they contain seven times more protein than steak. They might not taste as good as Aberdeen Angus but they will keep you alive. I have a go at catching some. Paulina giggles as I hum and do something akin to the ‘Agadoo’ dance – I could do a song from my own album but that might put them off. I have millions of flies in my face but none in the yellow bowl I’m waving around. I waft it about my hea
d a bit more and look inside: ‘I’ve got three!’ But I need a plateful and it could take all night.
Luckily this is a TV show so, in the best tradition of TV chefs, Paulina produces a few thousand she’s caught earlier. Who the hell discovered this technique and then decided to make fly burgers out of the paste? It’s ingenious but all I can say is that they must have been really sick of fish. Paulina poaches the paste in milk – it looks like two mud balls and smells like acrid green meat. However, the kids love it. It’s their version of M&Ms and they queue up excitedly for some.
It tastes like it smells but certain situations call for a swallow, especially in the presence of such a kind lady. Her love for the children is humbling. I discover that she is in her late fifties and is looking after sixteen kids on her own. Her selflessness, warmth and goodness make her a privilege to meet. We all fall in love with Paulina.
As we start to prepare to film the next sequence, night fishing for omena, a massive storm comes out of nowhere.
Gilbert says, ‘We need to take cover – it’s a bad storm.’
There is a bit of wind, the clouds turn black and within sixty seconds a hurricane hits. I’ve never experienced anything like it. It’s quick,violent and like being mugged by Mother Nature. We run to a hut; the rain is pouring down, the wind thrashing us. We cover our heads and leg it. One by one we enter the hut. There is a thud, like a melon being split open with an axe. Alistair has smacked his head into the edge of the corrugated roof and is on the ground. We get him inside where we see the blood is pumping down his face like a waterfall. Everyone is panicking trying to keep the claret in the bottle. It’s a deep diagonal gash across his skull – three inches long and an inch across. Alistair is in a blind panic; the more worked up he gets, the more blood he’s losing. I want to slap him.
‘Alistair, calm down. You’re going to be fine.’
His eyes are haunted by an accident he had in 1991, when he was dragged under a car as it screeched to a stop over about fifty metres, subsequently trapping him under it. His bald head still bears the physical scars from that terrifying incident and now he’s suffering the mental fallout. His heart rate is in overdrive. I use my shirt to stop the bleeding and pinch the wound together with my fingers. Craig finds a small first-aid kit in his camera bag and I grab the iodine.
‘Right, Alistair, I need you to bring your breathing down. This is going to hurt but you need to breathe through it.’
Donning the latex gloves, I pour iodine into the wound. He whimpers and hums. I tell him to stop humming or he’ll attract the flies and he raises a smile. We clean the wound with water and sterile dressings, then I cut a dozen thin strips of gaffer tape and begin to pull the wound together with the tape. It’s a crude method of butterfly stitching but all I can say is thank God I played Jimmy the Porter in Casualty.
Alessandra gets on the satellite phone to Helen. She is amazing, and a flying doctor arrives within the hour. The doctor stitches Alistair up properly and he tells us that whoever taped the wound up was a genius who saved Alistair’s life. I push past Craig and Peter and tell him it was me. He shakes my hand. Peter and Craig groan. The doctor tells Alistair he must rest and there is no way he can film the night sequence. Alistair is really upset and frustrated, and reluctantly we take him back to the hotel. On the way back, the Machiavelli in me rears his head – if Alistair’s out of action this could be my directorial debut, my chance to be an actor/director like Tim Robbins, Kenneth Branagh or Mel Gibson. As Mel would say: ‘If any of you have a bleeping problem with that I’ll put you in a bleeping rose garden. But you have to bleep me first. I deserve to be bleeped first!’
All this megalomania is clouding my mind. I check on Alistair, like Macbeth on Duncan. He’s in bed. He feels OK now and he wants to get up. I push him back down and put another pillow behind his head. He doesn’t want to be mothered, he wants to direct.
‘Alistair, you’re badly injured. We’ll be fine without you. Besides, I’ve been asked to direct before.’
‘What?’
‘Doctors.’
‘Doctors? That shitty BBC excuse for a drama?’
Alistair sits up energetically. I push him down again firmly and walk over to the bathroom, returning with a hand mirror.
‘Look at the size of your head!’ I say dramatically. I show him the close-up.
‘Oh, my God,’ he whimpers.
‘You look like one of the waiters in Cabbages and Condoms – you can’t direct a night-fishing sequence looking like that, can you?’
‘No,’ he says, sinking under the duvet.
I tuck him in extra tightly so he can barely move. In my room I don a red cravat, select a Montecristo No. 2 from the thermidor, and I am ready for my directorial debut. I summon the crew together for a pep talk.
‘OK, guys, this is how I see it.’ I give them the vision. Four guys from the village are standing in front of me looking bewildered, while Gilbert translates. Peter thinks I’ve been chewing khat.
‘The opening shot is of Gilbert, the fishermen and me heading off into the night. It’s a beautiful balmy night and the stars are shining. Everything is perfect.’
Craig sets the camera up on the shore and I jump in the boat and we head out into the lake. We quickly lose sight of Craig and the crew. It’s pitch-black on the lake and the only way the fishermen know where they are is by looking at where they’ve come from. It’s Irish GPS. We wait for the crew to catch up and I call out their names, impatiently. Nothing. I get out my mobile.
‘Craig? Where are you?’
‘Waiting on the bank, watching you fuck off into the night.’
‘You’re meant to be following in the other boat.’
‘You didn’t say that.’
I apologise to Gilbert and the fishermen as we row back to shore. I’m well aware they have livings to make and, although we do pay all contributors, we like them to still carry on with their livelihoods where possible. I call a meeting but there is immediate dissent in the ranks.
‘Let’s talk to one another, work as a team and direct this sequence together,’ says Craig.
I want to throw a boot at his head, like Ferguson did to Beckham, but I stay quiet. We row out again and crack on with the fishing. We’re floating lamps on the water to attract flies that are snapped up as tasty snacks by the omena fish.
‘Craig, I want you to film this sequence in a serendipitous way.’
‘What the fuck does that mean?’
‘Don’t force it, just let it happen.’
‘Where do you want me to point the camera, Robson?’
‘At the fish, Craig.’
As we wait for the lamps to be surrounded by fish, the Kenyans sing a song, ‘Naru naru’. I join in.
‘Film it, Craig.’
‘What does it mean?’
‘I don’t know, my Swahili’s a bit rusty. How’s your Maori?’
I sing the Northumberland folk song ‘When the Boat Comes In’. It seems to go down well.
Fish begin to surround the first lamp. The throwers lower the nets off the side of the boat and the rowers, like me, paddle like crazy to encircle the fish. If our rowing is too slow the fish will escape. When we’ve rounded them up, we haul them in. It’s back-breaking work and we won’t know until the last moment if it’s been worth it. We have a football-sized haul of omena, known as silver treasure by the islanders. They usually get thirty or forty times that in a ten-hour period and it’s taken us five hours to film one cast. Not a big haul and worth about a quid.
We send the fishermen on their way so they can claw back some of the lost time. They will go from lamp to lamp for hours to catch enough to feed the village and make some money. Alistair is on the shore waiting for us. He is very irritable and feeling sorry for himself. We all tell him it went really well.
‘One of the best sequences of the series,’ adds Peter Prada.
Black Marlin
Alistair is much better the next day and there is no way on God’s ear
th he is going to miss the black marlin sequence. We fly back to Watamu and are back on a big white flashy sports boat, with our new Kenyan fishing guide Jackson at the helm.
‘Are you confident we’ll catch today?’
‘Why not?’ he says in his rich-treacle voice.
‘Exactly, why not?’
‘Why not?’
The exchange continues thus for some time.
We’re heading for Sailfish Alley, where I caught my dorado. Jackson and I set three rods, cast the lines and trawl them behind the boat. We’re looking for bonitos with small squid lures, and within forty-five seconds a reel starts screaming like a small child: Waha! Waha! The line keeps going out and out and out. A bonito wouldn’t take a line like that. Jackson and I look at each other. We’ve got a black marlin on forty-pound test line. No one’s ready and the tackle’s way too light: the density of a marlin leader line is 150 to 200 pounds breaking strain. I have to make a decision. Do I hard-play the fish and snap the line? (The problem being that the type of hook for bait fish isn’t dis solvable – although the theory is that nature will take care of it and it will eventually come out like a splinter.) Or do I try to land this fish on tackle meant for a fish a third of the size? As I’m mulling it over the marlin blows out of the water like a missile. Craig misses the shot. We’ve all been caught on the back foot.
For the next two hours I play the fish and let the marlin run and run until he tires. I get the fish close to the boat for over an hour, but then it turns tail and I have to start all over again. It’s a titanic battle that, slowly, I’m beginning to win. I bring the marlin back towards the boat while Craig puts the underwater camera beneath the waves to film the vast fish. It’s a large male. Females are up to three times bigger.
To count as a catch I need to get as much tension on the line as possible so that Jackson is able to get hold of the leader (the last bit of line). I reel with all my might until the black marlin rises like a submarine. I can see the leader. Jackson puts a glove on and ‘bills the fish’, grabbing its lethal bill to make it safe. Just as he’s about to get hold of the last bit of line to confirm a catch, the fish turns and bolts. The bill flicks Jackson into the air and he bombs into the water behind the boat.
