IT was one of the more memorable sights I have seen. It was an unseasonably warm March morning a dozen or so years ago, blissfully bright with the slightest chill in the air. The sun shone and illuminated everything: Glasgow looked as gallus as ever. Just outside the Sikh Temple on Berkeley Street, sat on a bench, were a couple of septuagenarian Sikh gents, swathed in ski jacket-type anoraks. One had a garish golf umbrella resting across his lap.
Their brightly coloured, dusty old turbans creating quite the scene. There was a charming incongruity to them. As I approached, the silence they were sharing was briefly broken by a few well chosen words of Punjabi.
“It’s that bloody Fish man. He said it would rain today.” He gestured towards his golf umbrella. His friend laughed.
"Forty years and we still have no idea of this country. Sometimes sunshine; sometimes snow.”
They laughed heartily and I couldn't help but join in.
I suppose we are accustomed to the vagaries of the Scottish weather. As a resident of Raintown, I’m always surprised when it doesn't chuck it doon. I have a great T-shirt from the guys at Slanj. It has the word “Scotland” emblazoned across the front along with the meteorological symbols for sunshine, rain, snow and wind and the slogan: “Four Seasons, One Day.”
Expect the unexpected might be the best way to approach Scotland's climate. Nonetheless, I will always check the weather reports before going out; there’s no way I’m risking my new Italian tan, suede loafers in a downpour.
Now, though, retired former BBC weatherman Bill Giles has accused today's presenters of “behaving like nannies” by warning viewers to stay indoors during smog or "watch out on untreated roads and pavements".
Giles has also questioned the wisdom in naming so many of the storms, like Doris or Bawbag, thereby causing a desensitisation to genuine extremes of weather. “Whatever you think of the Met Office practice of naming storms," he said, "it's designed to add to the drama and credibility of the warning.”
He suggests advice should only ever be given “in exceptionally severe” circumstances, viewers relying on their “common sense” in all other cases.
He was never my favourite weatherman. When I first started working in television I used to see the meteorologists wandering about TV Centre. Can you imagine this fat boy frae Bishy sharing a corridor with Charlton, Kettley and the Fish man? Suzanne Charlton was the most colour co-ordinated presenter ever; John Kettley had an excellent beard; Michael Fish’s trousers were always an inch too short. But the curmudgeonly Bill Giles just came across like everyone's angry uncle; on the verge of giving you a right good telling-off.
I have more than a little sympathy for weather presenters, who are competing in a crowded marketplace. The worldwide web, rolling news networks, Russian involvement in the reality show that is the current presidency off the United States of America ... all make the age-old, ever-evolving weather seem a little pedestrian. So what if they name a few storms, make those storms feel real, create conversation? I love that wee bit at the end of the weather report when Tomasz Schafernaker suggests leaving the house with a brolly; it's sweet and cute and personal.
Giles may be furious at such a pay-off, but there were similar criticisms of Nick Ross’s “don’t have nightmares” sign-off at the end of Crimewatch. (I can think of nothing more likely to give me nightmares than the stony-faced Ross looking down the barrel of a camera and suggesting that I don't.)
In an ever-changing world where the weird has become the new normal, black is white, white is black, there’s more than a little comfort in the sincerity, the sweetness of the concern the weather presenter has for the viewer.
Maybe Bill Giles, who has a long, celebrated service as a weather man, doesn't like change; maybe he wishes he was still doing it; or maybe, just maybe, he's still bitter that, unlike John Kettley, he was never the subject of a top-30 pop song.
Perhaps Giles should just put the record straight and release a single now, a download. And I’ve got the perfect title.
Don’t have nightmares.
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