It has been a strange old week in the self-proclaimed oil capital of Europe. According to some members of Aberdeen’s energy sector, a group with a code of silence that would trump any Trappist throng, the North Sea is a busted flush, a dead zone of drilled-out fields with a long-term future to match.
There will certainly be some transient pain in the industry; BP has confirmed 300 job losses and other subsidiaries will view the plummeting price of oil as a wonderful opportunity to trim any perceived excess fat. But if there is any panic in Aberdeen over the end of the gravy train, it is being well concealed. One executive told me on Friday: “Times are tough. And they might get tougher.” But nobody believes the party’s over. That’s probably because most employees are older than 40 and have golden handshakes on a Midas scale.
I walked along Aberdeen’s Union Street last week and one particular image struck me. It’s a once-glorious, now-dowdy thoroughfare with a few refulgent granite buildings surrounded by an excess of eyesores. On one side of the street, the Pound Shop announced that it was closing; on the other, the staff at the recently opened Eclectic Fizz champagne bar were preparing to welcome their steady stream of customers.
At another location just outside the city on Thursday evening, a few hours after the BP news had broken, a group of four senior oil officials awaited their trip to the airport in Dyce. After a few minutes, four separate cabs arrived to pick them up: it didn’t matter the quartet were all travelling to the same destination. It may be a recession, Jim. But in Aberdeen, not as we usually know it.
Oiling the future
There are plenty of young bloggers with big dreams about becoming the next JK Rowling. In cyberspace, everybody can hear you screaming about your latest blockbuster. But, oblivious to that fact, Estelle Maskame, a 17-year-old author from Peterhead, who does part-time shifts in her local Asda, has just signed a three-book deal with the leading Scottish publishers Black & White. The teenager has been writing hundreds of thousands of words since she was 13 and has more than 125,000 followers on Twitter, who are voracious followers of her trilogy of her DIMILY novels. That stands for: “Did I mention I love you?” I met Estelle recently and, as you might expect, she is thrilled by the realisation her books will be on sale throughout the world by the end of the year. But this is no dewy-eyed ingénue. “I love writing and I know what I like,” she said. “So, if it appeals to me, I think other people my age will feel the same way.” It’s a safe bet the films will be out by 2017.
Oiling the past
Talking of movies, Jon S Baird, the man responsible for adapting and directing the acclaimed film version of Irvine Welsh’s Filth, is working on a new project. Baird, a full-blooded Aberdeen FC fan, who can recall the days when Alex Ferguson fine-tuned his hair-drying techniques at Pittodrie, is in the process of casting for his new biopic of…Laurel and Hardy. Baird has grown fascinated with the duo who produced so many short gems. “It’s a fascinating story, one I never knew until I started looking into it,” said Baird. “Stan always played this slightly simple-minded person in the films, but off screen, he was one of the sharpest, shrewdest people you could ever imagine.” The question merely remains: who will play the couple in question? Baird still doesn’t know, but he’s talking to some A-list stars. “Put it this way, it’s not Cannon and Ball!”
Fuel problems
Scotland brought the world the deep-fried Mars Bar, so it has a fine tradition to uphold as we approach the annual Burns Supper season. Still, one wonders about the latest product from Inverurie firm JG Ross. It has just unveiled its “Haggis Roll”, which, according to spokesperson Dianne Smith, consists of “haggis, neeps and potatoes in a puff pastry case”. They’ll probably have sold out in Aberdeen by the time you read this.
Neil Drysdale is a feature writer for STV in Aberdeen
