Guy Martin: Proper Jobs (U&Dave)
Being a television presenter is not a proper job.
Perhaps that’s why comedian Russell Howard, once a panel game regular and host of shows such as Good News, has announced he’s quitting the small screen.
Fellow stand-up Dara O’Briain, a gifted all-rounder whose CV includes science documentaries as well as Mock The Week and Robot Wars, told me that he regards television as a sideline. It’s the hard graft of touring that pays his bills.
Guy Martin does have a proper job, as a lorry mechanic, in addition to his career as a motorcycle racer. He’s never pretended that his TV escapades, whether that’s restoring vintage planes or embarking on quirky travelogues, are anything more than a bit of fun.
Whenever he meets blokes who roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty for a living, it’s plain he admires them — and is a little envious. Though he’s a natural in front of the camera, Guy’s work ethic is positively puritan: if it doesn’t leave you physically hurting, it’s not real work.
His latest series, Proper Jobs, will see him training as a firefighter, joining a mountain rescue unit and working as a nature warden on an uninhabited island. But none could be tougher than his debut stint on a Brixham trawler, slogging night and day to haul the nets and gut the catch.
Guy Martin is a British former motorcycle racer and heavy vehicle mechanic turned television presenter
He retired from motorcycle racing in July 2017
His latest series, Proper Jobs, will see him training as a firefighter, joining a mountain rescue unit and working as a nature warden on an uninhabited island
The past few years have brought us numerous documentaries and reality shows about the life of a deep-sea fisherman. We’ve even seen former Labour frontbencher Ed Balls joining a trawler crew — though Ed, naturally, was on a European vessel, not a British one.
But none of those programmes conveyed the sheer hardship and danger of life at sea the way Guy did. From the first morning, when he ate two fried breakfasts to test his stomach in a heavy swell, he seemed to be daring the waters to do their worst.
Out on deck in the small hours, he didn’t baulk at climbing inside the nets to speed up the release of tons of fish. Minutes later, he was in the gutting room with a knife, slicing open fish that were still writhing — though he admitted it made him feel like a serial killer.
Sometimes, the catch fought back. Cuttlefish, a cousin of squid, known as ‘black gold’ for the prices they fetch at market, sprayed his face with ink.
Guy’s enthusiasm almost sent him overboard when, attempting to manoeuvre the net winch, he became entangled in the cable. ‘As I let it go,’ he said, ‘it had gone round the back of me lifejacket. That wouldn’t have been long getting messy.’
The work was so exhausting that, on one break, he fell asleep on a bench with another sleeping crew member propped up against him.
At the end of the four days, collecting a pay packet of just over £1,100, he was raring to get out to sea again: ‘It’s misery, mate, misery. And I love it.’
