Wildlife expert Hamza Yassin shows Martin Clunes and Ben Miller the best of Scottish wildlife
Scotland: Escape to the Wilderness is on Monday at 10pm on More4
Ed Grenby - 15 October 2021
Unpredictable, uncooperative, unapproachable – celebrities and wildlife have a lot in common. So if anyone can handle a few VIPs, it’s an expert animal-wrangler like Hamza Yassin. The natural history cameraman has filmed all over the world, but in his new More4 series, Yassin takes a set of famous guests out into the wilder corners of his beloved Scotland in search of some of its most magnificent animals. Speaking here with Martin Clunes and Ben Miller, two of his co-explorers, Yassin says that if pampered stars can survive and learn to love the great outdoors, so can the rest of us…
So where did you go?
HAMZA YASSIN We could have done that Attenborough thing and found gorillas in Rwanda or kangaroos in Australia, but I wanted to showcase places anyone can visit. So we came to my backyard, to Scotland – Rev Richard Coles in Ardnamurchan, Baroness Sayeeda Warsi in the Cairngorms…
MARTIN CLUNES I demanded to go to Mull and see otters, which I love. That was like my “rider”: instead of a bowl of M&Ms with the brown ones taken out, I insisted on otters.
BEN MILLER I got the coolest gig because I was at Bamff in Perthshire, where they’re rewilding this huge estate, and reintroducing keystone species at the top of the food pyramid. That meant beavers rather than wolves, but beavers are pretty amazing, as they change the landscape by damming rivers and creating marshland.
What did you see?
CLUNES I saw puffins, white-tailed eagles – and then got lucky with those otters. We were just giving up, driving along beside a loch, when I saw this wake in the water. It was an otter, so we piled out, sat still, and it came so close I could actually hear the crunching sound it made as it ate a crab. It was incredible – and also made me feel better about us humans cooking crabs alive, because that’s a better way to go than being murdered by an otter, having your back ripped off and your legs individually removed.
MILLER The most amazing thing for me was what I heard. We went looking for bats one night, and Hamza made this little noise with his hands that attracted them. He’s like “the bat whisperer”. Except he uses his fingers, so maybe “the bat fiddler”. Anyway, we had this device that alters the pitch of their signals to make them audible to humans, so we could hear what they were saying to each other, which was incredible. Though I think it was, “You see, I told you. It’s just a guy messing about with his fingers.”
YASSIN It’s true. Sometimes the most vivid memories aren’t visual. The smell of the puffin colony on Mull was incredible…
CLUNES I thought that was you!
How did everyone cope in the wilderness?
YASSIN Differently! Sayeeda needed cosseting and reassuring; with Martin, if you said we’re swimming across the lake he’d be like, “Bring it on! Where’s my swimsuit?” But we were mostly glamping, which does bring challenges – in some cases, the outhouse would be a 40-metre walk away in the dark, so there are one or two episodes with unexpected night-time bathroom adventures.
CLUNES Not me! I managed that end of things pretty well. Especially for someone whose normal idea of a holiday is to lie very still.
MILLER I stayed in an off-grid cabin in the middle of the rewilded forest with no running water – the kind of place we’ll all be living in 50 years. It was terrifying at night because there were strange animal noises. It turned out there was a military base nearby, and it was a helicopter flying overhead.
Can anyone do this stuff?
YASSIN Absolutely! The beauty of wildlife travel in Scotland is that there are so many specialist operators. If you want to see an osprey, you just have to google “osprey Scotland” and you’ll find Loch Garten where they have binoculars and telescopes for you, a person telling you what’s happening in the nest, a camera on them for the visually impaired, the lot. You’ll find something similar for reindeer, eagles, and the beautiful Fingals Cave on Staffa – half-day tours, multi-day tours, everything.
MILLER I’m going back with my kids next year.
CLUNES I’m only going back if Hamza comes.
YASSIN But seriously, there are so many great guides out there. And apart from one island that we reached by boat, everything in this series you can visit tomorrow. Most of them you can reach by train and bus, too. Get out there!
Unpredictable, uncooperative, unapproachable – celebrities and wildlife have a lot in common. So if anyone can handle a few VIPs, it’s an expert animal-wrangler like Hamza Yassin. The natural history cameraman has filmed all over the world, but in his new More4 series, Yassin takes a set of famous guests out into the wilder corners of his beloved Scotland in search of some of its most magnificent animals. Speaking here with Martin Clunes and Ben Miller, two of his co-explorers, Yassin says that if pampered stars can survive and learn to love the great outdoors, so can the rest of us…
So where did you go?
HAMZA YASSIN We could have done that Attenborough thing and found gorillas in Rwanda or kangaroos in Australia, but I wanted to showcase places anyone can visit. So we came to my backyard, to Scotland – Rev Richard Coles in Ardnamurchan, Baroness Sayeeda Warsi in the Cairngorms…
MARTIN CLUNES I demanded to go to Mull and see otters, which I love. That was like my “rider”: instead of a bowl of M&Ms with the brown ones taken out, I insisted on otters.
BEN MILLER I got the coolest gig because I was at Bamff in Perthshire, where they’re rewilding this huge estate, and reintroducing keystone species at the top of the food pyramid. That meant beavers rather than wolves, but beavers are pretty amazing, as they change the landscape by damming rivers and creating marshland.
What did you see?
CLUNES I saw puffins, white-tailed eagles – and then got lucky with those otters. We were just giving up, driving along beside a loch, when I saw this wake in the water. It was an otter, so we piled out, sat still, and it came so close I could actually hear the crunching sound it made as it ate a crab. It was incredible – and also made me feel better about us humans cooking crabs alive, because that’s a better way to go than being murdered by an otter, having your back ripped off and your legs individually removed.
MILLER The most amazing thing for me was what I heard. We went looking for bats one night, and Hamza made this little noise with his hands that attracted them. He’s like “the bat whisperer”. Except he uses his fingers, so maybe “the bat fiddler”. Anyway, we had this device that alters the pitch of their signals to make them audible to humans, so we could hear what they were saying to each other, which was incredible. Though I think it was, “You see, I told you. It’s just a guy messing about with his fingers.”
YASSIN It’s true. Sometimes the most vivid memories aren’t visual. The smell of the puffin colony on Mull was incredible…
CLUNES I thought that was you!
How did everyone cope in the wilderness?
YASSIN Differently! Sayeeda needed cosseting and reassuring; with Martin, if you said we’re swimming across the lake he’d be like, “Bring it on! Where’s my swimsuit?” But we were mostly glamping, which does bring challenges – in some cases, the outhouse would be a 40-metre walk away in the dark, so there are one or two episodes with unexpected night-time bathroom adventures.
CLUNES Not me! I managed that end of things pretty well. Especially for someone whose normal idea of a holiday is to lie very still.
MILLER I stayed in an off-grid cabin in the middle of the rewilded forest with no running water – the kind of place we’ll all be living in 50 years. It was terrifying at night because there were strange animal noises. It turned out there was a military base nearby, and it was a helicopter flying overhead.