The best-selling author and award-winning broadcaster tells coast about his touring one-man show celebrating the Shipping Forecast
I grew up far from the sea in south-east London, but one of my earliest memories is of visiting my grandfather’s fishing boat at Folkestone. I can still picture him emerging from the wheelhouse, shirtsleeves rolled up, waving to us on the quayside. He died when I was five, so I must have been tiny.
Thinking about it, that could be what triggered a lifelong love of the sea to the point where I’m now touring a theatre show celebrating the Shipping Forecast. I am a bit obsessed with the Shipping Forecast, and to mark its centenary a couple of years ago, I turned a book I wrote about the forecast into a one-man stage show exploring its mysteries, quirks and stories.
There are Shipping Forecast fans everywhere, it seems, as the show is still keeping me busy doing something I love. I wake up every morning to the Shipping Forecast, gently roused by the poetic beating of our coastal bounds that reminds us how we are defined by the sea.
Home these days is Dundee on the Tay Estuary. Having also lived overlooking Dublin Bay and on the seafront at Deal in Kent, I definitely seem to be an east-facing coast person. I can’t imagine any finer way to start the day than watching the sun rise over the sea. When I lived in Deal, I swam every morning, usually early enough to have the beach to myself. The combination of space and solitude was unbeatable; being in the water when the sun appeared over the horizon was a glorious bonus. Add in the flask of tea waiting on the shingle and, well, the day could only go downhill after that.
Charlie Connelly’s Attention All Shipping: A Celebration of the Shipping Forecast is touring theatres this autumn. Book tickets at shippingshow.co.uk.
