'It's the island life for me'

His 14 jobs - sub-postmaster, guest house owner, special constable, fireman, ambulanceman, store keeper, petrol pump attendant, insurance agent, rent collector, school bus driver, piermaster and one or two others now mentally sidelined - occupied him 15 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Old Seamus lived on the island of Gigha - pronounced as in top gear, or bottom gear, or possibly even Granada Ghia - two miles off the Mull of Kintyre. If he deserved a medal he got one, BEM in 1989.

He has now retired to the mainland, his all-trade boots filled by Viv Oliver, a former senior staff member at Durham University. "Can you ring back?" she asks. "It's a bit hectic here this morning."

Viv has two advantages. Gigha no longer has a special constable - nor the remotest need of one - and she has her husband to help. Seamus McSporran wasn't a coastguard as Andy Oliver is, mind, nor hired bikes either.

Last Friday, however, like the other 110 inhabitants of the six mile long island, they had a historic, hair-down, hoe-down night off.

Gigha is translated as God's Island and nowhere, says 48-year-old Viv, comes closer to being paradise on earth.

Until two years ago she was assistant director of the university's Year in Industry scheme and had been manager of Chester-le-Street's under 12s football team. Andy, eight years her junior, was a lecturer at the University of Sunderland.

They both loved Scotland, contemplated buying a small hotel on the mainland, had never heard of Gigha until an estate agent's brochure smiled serendipitously.

"We drove to the north end of the island, stood on the beach for a while - there are such wonderful beaches - and realised how peaceful and how beautiful it was. We only had half an hour to look at the business before the ferry went back but I had a little tear down my face on the crossing and Andy asked me what was wrong. It was because I didn't know what I would say if he didn't want to settle there, too."

For all its tranquillity, its palm trees and its Gulf Stream location, however, Gigha was an island in the shade.

For centuries, ever since the MacNeills battled with the MacDonalds - as everyone else seems to have done - its ownership has been almost feudal.

The Baron of Gigha lived in the big house, laird of all he surveyed, the rest of the island his oft-neglected tenants. Among previous owners was Sir James Horlick, he of the bedtime drink, the last an elderly recluse called Derek Holt.

The island's only road is seriously potholed, its bracken overgrown, walls and fences broken down. Hardly anyone has central heating, says Viv, none has double glazing, everyone needs new windows and doors.

None, however, needs door locks. "It just feels so safe here. There hasn't been a crime for as long as anyone can remember, we even leave the keys in the car."

Though the working day is long - "we hit the ground running, it was three months before we had the chance to take a breather and realise how lucky we were" - it has also been good for her health. "I was so badly asthmatic in Co Durham, really poorly, that I couldn't drive to work without coughing all the way and couldn't get upstairs when I got there. Since we came to Gigha, I've never used an inhaler.

"We were both intelligent, educated people who foolishly thought that running a shop and associated businesses on a small island wouldn't be terribly difficult, but among the bonuses is that you never get a traffic jam here - and it's just fantastic that I can breathe again."

Dreaming of an island retreat, previous prospective owners have included Sean Connery, Mick Jagger and Simon le Bon. Word that Richard Branson had booked into a local guest house spread quickly, too, though this one turned out to be a slightly less well heeled joiner from Yorkshire.

When Holt decided to sell, however, he accepted the islanders' own bid - £4m from the Lottery-backed Scottish Land Fund on condition that £1m is repaid within two years.

The deeds were handed over to Gigha Heritage Trust chairman Willie McSporran, Seamus's brother, on Friday lunchtime. The village hall celebration which followed at night went on until dawn. Viv got to bed at 2am.

"I've never made the end of a Gigha ceilidh yet," she says.

Though anxious to retain the island's peacefulness, they believe that community ownership will lead them more comfortably towards the 21st Century.

"There's much more incentive to work for your own good instead of everything going into the laird's pocket," says Viv. "Every bit of money we make now goes into a central fund. We have appointed a community development manager and we have high hopes."

After that, she had to be up and doing: school bus run, shop, petrol pump, guests. The sun was shining, though: God's Island was living up to its name.

l Money to help the islanders clear off their debt can be pledged through www.gigha.org. Viv has also written a cookery book for the fund - £5 from the Gigha Island Post Office, Argyll, PA41 7AA.

HORLICK'S? A malt drink patented by Gloucestershire brothers in America in 1873, made in Slough since 1908 and promoted as a cure for "Night starvation" since 1931. Horlick's is now sold worldwide, owned by GlaxoSmithKline. Thirty million pounds in weight a year are made at the Slough base alone. In India it's made from buffalo milk. Around 32 per cent of Britons sleep less than six hours and a third of all GP patients complain of lack of sleep. Guess who didn't have Horlick's last night?

A BIT further down the west coast from Gigha lies the Cumbrian town of Millom, said to be at the end of Europe's longest cul-de-sac. We wrote of a flying visit - Who wants to be a Millom heir? - two weeks ago.

Grist to the Millom, reaction has been mixed, nonetheless. "It is rare indeed for an article based on Millom to hit the spot so precisely," writes Mark Carr, but since he regards the town as "dire and downtrodden", the hit may have been less than palpable.

Mark lives there, wishes he didn't. Vic Clarke, also on Millom Heirs Row, thought the piece amusing and interesting. "Millom is usually written off in the negative. It was great to read such a balanced view."

Steve Harland from Stockton was a regular Millom visitor when a van man for Whitelock's, cheese factors to the gentry, after leaving school in 1977.

"It reminded me of a Dr Who set from the Patrick Troughton era, perhaps populated by daleks, yetis and ice warriors" he says.

"It was a surreal place. It seemed to take an age to get there and when you did, you realised you had to go back the same way that you'd come in. It remains a mystery why the Hammer House of Horror never chose to use it as a location, thus providing much needed employment for the locals."

Then - since this is the column with more balance than the Great Blondin - there's John Weir, in Redcar. "The name of Millom gives me a warm glow as memories flood back," he writes.

John's dad was an instructor for sundry iron and steel companies, ferrous wheeled round Britain - "I was told I attended six schools in six months" - frequently returned to Millom.

John loved it - "a wondrous new world" - recalls Sudani and Wilson, Kepple and Betty at the music hall and a friendly family of Trolls. (Reg and Bella Troll, and their children Tommy and Peggy.)

His fondest memory, however, is of wearing out two pairs of short trousers in Millom's public park. "For a little lad from Redcar, playgrounds that were free and you could have as many goes as you wanted, were a truly wondrous thing.

"Redcar Borough Council refused to install s uch things in our parks because visitors would use them and deprive the beach concessionaries of their livelihoods."

Were Redcar's adults really so childish? More swings and roundabouts, perhaps, next week.

JEZ Lowe, said by the Daily Telegraph to have written and recorded one of the top ten "folk" albums of the 20th Century, began his assault on the 21st last Saturday. Recorded with his band the Bad Pennies, his new album is called Honesty Box. Terrific, honestly.

Jez is from Grants Houses, near Horden. His California-based record company is called Tantobie, the village near Stanley where his parents settled after arriving from Ireland. The launch was at the Black Swan Arts Centre in Newcastle. John "Basher" Alderson, the Hollywood actor who also has his roots in Horden's three foot seams, was in attendance, too. We wrote of his homecoming - local lad made baddie - last week. Everyone else followed.

Now internationally acclaimed - though Australians thought he was a band called Jezlowe - Jez writes mainly on working class themes and with historical acknowledgment to Tommy Armstrong, the Co Durham balladeer from the dark days of the Trimdon Grange explosion.

Like Tommy Armstrong, he wrote a song about being in Durham Jail - or Durham, as spartanly they call it in these parts. There's also a brilliant, bitter-sweet song about a chap called Maddison who wins a car in a slogan competition:

The car was brought from Ferryhill, with cameras and a blonde

She pressed her chest on Maddison and called him Cheeky Fond...

Best of all is Armstrong's Army, echoing down the years though sung unaccompanied by the quartet.

Tantobie is run by Andy Smyser, a successful American lawyer who met Jez when he lodged with her and gave it all up to be his manager. "I still keep my lawyer's licence in case we fall out," she said, and - as managers do, presumably - she helped make the sandwiches, an' all.

Jez Lowes's UK tour starts at Bishop Auckland Town Hall on May 2, includes the Whitby Moor and Coast festival the following day and Washington's celebrated Davy Lamp folk club on May 25.

Honesty Box is available through www.tantobie.com

...and thanks, finally, to Neil and Simon, the Darlington likeable lads who on Newcastle station after the Jez Lowe launch handed over a precious copy of their four-track CD on their own Woof label. Unfortunately - Woof with the smooth - Honesty Box didn't just blow the mind, it blew the CD player, too. More, perhaps, when it's fixed.

Published: Thursday, March 21, 2002