I have been writing for the lovely Sarah White at Kilden Mor since 2020. She first contacted me during the pandemic and asked if I would be interested in writing some blog posts about Cornish history for her website which, of course, I was delighted to do. So since then, I am the one behind some of the articles on all things Cornish that come out every month.
And coincidentally around the same time that Sarah got in touch the TV presenter Fern Britton started following me on Twitter!
Then a few months later something even stranger happened, I received an email from a TV production company asking me if I would be able to help them with some research for an upcoming series and would I also like to be part of it! It was to be a show in which Fern returns to her roots and explores her favourite places in Cornwall.
The researcher told me that Fern herself had pointed them in the direction of my blog and had specifically asked for me to be involved! Well, how could I say no to that!?
Fern Britton’s TV series ‘My Cornwall’
Over the next couple of years I ended up being involved in three different TV series that Fern was part of. Two seasons of ‘My Cornwall’ and one of ‘Watercolour Challenge’.
I had been on the television before – one evening while I was hoovering, I got a phone call asking me if I knew anything about Cornish choughs. It turned out that the person on the other end of the phone was one of Julia Bradbury’s team and I ended up meeting her at Kynance Cove while she was filming her ‘Devon and Cornwall Walks’ series.
After warning Julia that we would have to be extremely lucky to actually see any choughs that day, as if on cue, as if they had been hiding just out of view, a pair of our wonderful national birds appeared in the air just behind us. They put on a real show, swooping and dancing on the wing, squawking their distinctive call, and the film crew got all the shots they needed. Typical!
Anyway, back to Fern…
For the first series I met Fern and her team at King Doniert’s Stone. This is a small but atmospheric place that is very important to Cornish history. Doniert is considered to be the last king of Cornwall and he drowned in the nearby River Fowey, perhaps close to the beautiful Golitha Falls, in c875 AD. The two decorative granite stones that we filmed are said to mark his final resting place – or at least commemorate his passing.
One of the pillars has the inscription: Doniert rogavit pro anima which means ‘Doniert has asked [for this to be made] for his soul[’s sake’].
This was the first time I met the star of the show and she wasn’t starry at all. She arrived in the little open-top sports car they had hired for her to drive for the show and made us all laugh by managing to accidentally toot the horn every time she tried to squeeze in or out of the vehicle’s compact door.
