Martin Clunes says Greenland would be full of "massage" parlours for the military if Trump took over
Clunes is discovering more about the islands of the Atlantic.
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.
Last year we saw you in Islands of the Pacific, this time it's Islands of the Atlantic. When do we get Islands of Poole Harbour?
"I'll get there! If there’s an appetite for it, I would love to go on doing these programmes, because I think islands are fascinating studies in human nature. The more of them I see, the more I learn about the commonalities of island life: people are tackling the same problems but in their own ways that are unique to their culture. For instance, this series takes us from the tropical Bijagos Islands off the coast of Guinea-Bissau in West Africa to Arctic Greenland – but all the islanders have to work so hard to live."
And you mucked in to help out?
"Well, I did try and get out of it in the Faroe Islands. I was supposed to be diving for mussels, in a dry-suit, but I thought about throwing a sickie, because I’ve used one before and it was a disaster. The act of diving means pointing your head towards the bottom of the sea, which means the air in the suit goes to your feet, so your feet inflate like a lifebuoy and you become a victim of the waves, thrown around like an idiot.
"But they do work hard, these islanders. Nobody has just one job. For instance, still in the Faroes, we met this farmer called Harriet Olafsdottir – she's a shepherdess, she runs an Airbnb and she also primps up and decorates her sheep, photographs them and sells the photos online."
Life must be easier on the tropical islands that you visited, surely?
"Well, that’s interesting. On São Tomé, off the west coast of Africa, the oceans are full of fish, food literally grows on trees – children can just pluck a mango off a branch – but there’s real poverty. People are carving out their life in the ruins of the Portuguese empire, where the jungle has started to consume the buildings, and they kind of squat in them. There was a lady there who was eking out a living shelling peanuts she’d picked, and she got really cross with us for filming and invading her space, but really it was just a ruin.
"Then we were filming down where the fishermen would come into shore with the boats, and the ladies would go down to meet them, bully the men into getting fish, then carry the fish off in these beautiful baskets on their heads. I think it’s fair to say the men on some of these islands don’t make great husbands – I don’t think they’ve really embraced fidelity – and in fact we were offered two babies. I was standing around and a lady asked where we were from, and we said England.
"She said, 'I was doing really well at school until I got this,' and she was talking about the baby asleep in her arms and her three others. 'Now that’s it,' she said. 'That’s my education finished now, and I’ll never get a good job. Please take this baby, give it a life, because I can’t afford to.'"
How did you feel as an obvious outsider?
"It was amazing to be in some of these places where we were clearly such an oddity. In the Bijagós Islands, kids were thrilled that these bleached-looking things had turned up, and we couldn’t move for kids hanging off our arms and climbing up our backs. They thought the whole thing was hysterical."
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You weren't the only oddity, surely? Aren't islands famous for their eccentrics?
"Yes, there’s always room for eccentricity on an island. Take Prince Renato. We met him in Madeira, where he had bought an island – just a rock, really, before it was connected to the main island by a sea wall – and he says that because the connection is artificial, the island is its own principality, called Pontinha, and he’s the prince of it."
Sounds a bit like how Donald Trump sees himself in terms of Greenland. Having been there yourself, how do you think he'd fare there?
"I went to Guam for Islands of the Pacific, where there’s another air base and fuelling point for the US forces. Every other business is a 'massage' parlour servicing the military, and that's what I imagine they'd do to Greenland. But for the moment, at least, the place is absolutely mind-blowing. We were kayaking at nine o’clock at night, in blazing sunshine; another day, we went out in a boat through the icebergs, up to the glacier, and watched it fall into the ocean. Our captain pulled a bit of ice out of the water, smashed it up and put it in glasses, so we had whisky with 60,000-year-old ice in it. Honestly, I've never been anywhere like that – ever."
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Martin Clunes: Islands of the Atlantic will air on Friday 2nd May at 9pm on ITV1.
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