CONGRATULATIONS to my good chums Richard Else and Margaret Wicks of Newtonmore-based Triple Echo Productions for winning a Scottish BAFTA award for last year's The Great Climb telly extravaganza.
A round of applause also to the BBC's David Harron who commissioned it. That was a very bold thing to do considering the previous attempt at a live rock climbing broadcast.
It was about three years ago now, and some of the world's best climbers had gathered at Glenmore Lodge.
They had come from Spain, South Africa and Canada - England and Scotland had a pretty good representation too.
The Sticil, or Shelterstone Crag, above Loch Avon, was the setting for the climbs and on the day of the planned live broadcast it rained. It rained rather heavily.
Not to be outdone, and in the optimistic spirit shared by most Scottish outdoor enthusiasts, presenter Dougie Vipond and I were helicoptered in to announce to the nation that we were postponing the event for 24 hours, until the weather improved.
Sadly, it didn't, and the Sunday dawned even worse than Saturday had been.
Eventually Mr Harron announced to the assembled climbers, presenters, riggers, safety officers and technicians that the event was being called off. I think he may have used the word "postponed", and that was probably a prophetic choice of words.
To everyone's surprise BBC Scotland, under the enthusiastic prodding of Mr Harron, asked Richard Else to have another go, and this time the venue chosen was Strone Ulladale on the Isle of Harris, a preposterous chunk of overhanging rock that climber Dave MacLeod described as the "finest natural umbrella on Harris".
It proved to be a good choice. Not only was the climbing very, very hard, but the two rock climbers, Dave and Tim Emmett, were the only people to stay dry. I was part of the commentary team and we were doing our stuff from a small gazebo at the foot of the crag.
While two of us muttered superlatives into a microphone the other two spent much of the afternoon trying to stop the gazebo from blowing away. It was a foul day, but Dave and Tim were oblivious to the weather.
Their thoughts were on the climb, five pitches of overhanging rock, which they climbed in fine style, putting up a new route of E9 which, for those who don't understand climbing grades is very, very hard, going on bloody hard! Indeed, some claimed it to be the hardest mountain route in the country.
It was a huge success for the two climbers, but it was also a massive achievement for the other 50 or so people on the team.
The cameramen had to spend much of the day dangling from slim ropes; the safety crew and riggers did a fair amount of dangling too, often in atrocious conditions, and the television technicians were doing their stuff well outside the normal constraints of outdoor broadcasting. Most of them had never even experienced midges before.
One editor I spoke to told me he had worked in war-torn countries throughout the world reporting on live events, but nothing he had experienced in the Falklands, Iraq or Afghanistan had prepared him for the Highland midge.
I believe The Great Climb was the first outside broadcast of its kind to be shown in high definition and it just seemed incredible to me that we could film something from such a remote location, and thanks to incredible engineering and satellites people could watch the unfolding event from the comfort of their living room couch as it was happening.
And I guess that is why is was considered to be worthy of a BAFTA. Well done to everyone involved.
The three-disc DVD of the event, The Great Climb, is available from www.mountain-media.co.uk.
www.cameronmcneish.co.uk
