Hugh Elgar

I was phoned up by the researchers who wanted to do a feature on Camphor Laurel trees in Northern NSW in Australia. I was living in a village called Uki, making furniture from Camphor Laurel timber. It is beautifully figured and I still have some large slabs of it in one of my containers on my property in Scotland near Loch Ness. The theme was that Camphor Laurel was an invasive pest, brought in from China to provide fast growing shade trees for cattle that had supplanted the rainforest clearances. Mr Burke was not polite! I'd gone to some lengths to provide a mobile saw mill that would cut up a tree for the cameras, and put quite a bit of furniture in the shade on one side of the house my wife and I had built. He was quite disdainful of owner builders. The segment was OK though, and non judgemental and showed me sanding a plank, some pieces of furniture and a quick shot of our dog, and a really quick shot of the mill. Mr Burke at one point told me people would offer him really large sums of money to get on his show! ( I should be grateful ). Actually, a few people in the village noticed I'd been on telly, but that was all the feedback it got me, a bit of kudos that lasted a couple of weeks! I still have a video of the show, aired on 26/8/1994

Incredible album, pure brilliance from Bowie and his band. What stands out is the unpretentiousness of the music, and the actual recording of it.