Iain Maciver writes …

SO THERE I was sitting in the bar of the Isle of Benbecula House Hotel at Creagorry and someone said it was about time I changed my name to Michael and be like the rest of the company. The bartender beside me was Yorkshire Michael, and the other bar steward was Mickey from Dublin.

Cameraman is one of them, too. No, not Irish. That’s not what I meant. Silly.

Then Mickey helpfully pointed out that while there may, indeed, be three Michaels, only two of them held that most illustrious of titles, The Best Barmen in the Western Isles.

Turns out they had both nominated each other and then, being nice guys, both awarded the titles to each other. They were joint winners. And as there have still been no challengers for the title, they remain the Two Best Barmen in the Western Isles. Brilliant.

Lots of people put themselves forward for all sorts of things and some of them even get the grand titles they want.

However, most people have to go through some kind of tiresome voting thingummybob to get the big titles.

Like Esther Rantzen and John Smeaton, for example. They want the titles of MP for Luton South and Glasgow North East respectively. Er, why?

Unlike the Premier Pint Pullers of Creagorry, those two need more than each other’s votes to snatch those beauties.

Dear old Esther. I do love her. How we giggled at her funny vegetables and that dog that could pronounce the word sausages better than most people at home.

And John Smeaton seems sound. At his press conference, I thought he was going to tell one reporter he was going to set aboot him.

But Esther and John as MPs? No, no, no. We want them on the box being bonkers – what they are good at. Did you get that? No.

Now I think I’ll do some nominating myself. I nominate Willie Macaulay, of Sketch’s Taxis of Benbecula, as Best Taxi Driver in the Western Isles.

It was Yorkshire Michael who ordered a cab from Sketch’s recently to take him to Margaret, the hairdresser. He did not have much in for his tea and said Willie may have to take him shopping afterwards.

But there was going to be a bit of a wait until Michael got his locks permed.

So off goes Willie, promising to be back in an hour. However, oor Wullie got out his fishing rod and went on to the loch. By the time he was due to pick up Michael, he had hooked three brown trout.

Then, when he did pick up the closely-sheared bartender, Willie presented him with the fish, all skinned and filleted. Not only that, he also gave Michael detailed instructions on how to cook them so they tasted just grand.

Can anyone beat that giant among roadsters, Willie Mac of Sketch’s, for customer service? Has any other knight of island highways and passing places gone above and beyond in helping their passengers? I would be delighted to hear.

I must nominate Cameraman for an award, too. Without a quibble or a murmur, he showed his carefully-hidden caring side when he answered my call and came to soothe my fevered brow.

In the last few days, I have been flattened by what seemed at first like a common cold but turned into something more fluey – a swine of a thing, but probably not swine flu. Just the plain, ordinary, boring, gut-wrenching, head-bursting, eye-smarting, bone-aching, chest-tightening, toilet-troubling variety that we had all but forgotten was still lurking out there.

Mrs X, I regret to report, was no help at all. The sight of my distress must have been too much for the poor thing. She wrapped herself in the most un-sexy bedjacket she could find and lay down on the couch, in a forest of hot-water bottles and tissues, while declaring herself far more ill than I was.

“Scuse me, m’eudail, what about me-ee-ee?” I might as well have been banging my head against a wall.

If these women had any idea what man flu was really like, they would be more sympathetic. Could anything be worse?

So it was Cameraman who was my unlikely angel of mercy. Within seconds, he was racing back from Leurbost to bring us no fewer than three of the latest guaranteed best cures known to medical science.

However, there were mixed results, I am sad to say. I was better for an hour then felt worse and then was sick and then felt better but, just in case it would help, had some more of the supposedly lemon-flavoured concoction that the unshaven angel Cameraman had rushed to my bedside.

Lemon-flavoured? The powder you make it from looks a bit yellowish, but why, if there was any lemon in it, would it have a different taste: like a cross between stewed dung beetles, stale tobacco and Foggy the fisherman’s armpit after a long gutting session?

Not that I have been anywhere near Mr Macdonald’s usually well-fragranced underarms after any such activity, but he is a fisher of men I know well, so hopefully he won’t bash me. It was that different. With added vitamin C, of course.

If I didn’t have tears in my eyes before slugging that back, I sure did afterwards.

It will be all to do with motivation. The theory will be that one swig of that foul brew and your whole body will want to repair itself immediately to avoid any future trauma.

No pain, no gain, though. At least I can type now. So I can tell the world that Cameraman could have another career as a latter-day Florence Nightingale if he wants to jump ship to the NHS.

Yes, despite the sheer agony I suffered as he tried to find somewhere to stick that thermometer, I propose Cameraman as the Best Nursemaid in the Western Isles. But he does have shockingly cold hands.