It was the first day of "The Other Boat Race" filming today. Essentially we met up with our coaches and team mates and were told some of the rudiments of rowing.
Sadly (for very differing reasons) neither Sid Waddell nor Natasha Kaplinsky ended up doing the programme, but my boat includes such luminaries as restaruant critic Toby Young, Radioactive's Helen Atkinson-Wood, Sky TV's Anna Botting, the woman from the Heat advert whose name escapes me and disgraced ex-Tory MP and recent convert to Christianity, Jonathan Aitken. (I was told not to reveal any of the shows secrets -primarily the result of the final race - so please keep this information to yourselves). Luckily there are also three proper rowers in the boat, especially as, apart from Aitken, I am the tallest non-rower in the boat. And Aitkin seems to be destined to be our cox, in a strange reversal of tradition. Usually there is a boat full of tall men being coxed by a dwarf, but we've got a boat of midgets coxed by a six footer.
We were supposed to have the Olympic Pentathlon gold medallist, Stephanie Cook in our boat, but she went to both Oxford and Cambridge and was switched to the enemy at the last minute. She's the devout Christian who got to the top of her sport and won her medal and then gave it all up so she could use her doctor skills to help the poor children of the world, as God would want. You have to admire her for this.
When asked who I thought would win I commented that Cambridge would have God on their side, because Stephanie Cook has always been a Christian and didn't just take it up after she'd done something bad, unlike our representative of Jesus, Mr Aitken. I thought God would prefer someone who had always followed his plan, rather than someone who had decided to worship Him for possibly dubious reasons.
I wasn't sure how I'd feel about having to be in a team with Jonathon Aitken. I am not bothered by him being a liar or a Christian, but I thought his Toryism might prove problematic for me. But he actually came across as a rather sweet and quiet (though undeniably posh) man. On two occasions he brought up his time spent at Her Majesty's pleasure (in fact telling me that if I was a writer and comedian and wanted to get some material I should really go to prison). Like all of us he had been thrown in at the deep end with this stupid rowing idea, but he seemed to really try his hardest to do the best he could, despite his natural reserve. I started the day thinking I wouldn't get on with him, but ended it actually rather liking him. I suppose we are allowed to judge people by their opinions and philosophies (though often in doing so we are saying as much about ourselves as about them), but in a way to decide you won't like someone based on their political views is as stupid as judging someone by what they look like or where they come from.
He had none of the bluster or the arrogance that I might have expected if I was going to guess what he was like, possibly because of the things he's been through over the past few years, but maybe not. I certainly now think that his embracing of Christianity was genuine, rather than a cynical attempt to look like he'd reformed. I felt a bit guilty for my earlier crack at his expense (but not that guilty. It was just a joke and probably quite a funny one).
In the first couple of hours I was slightly regretting my decision to take part in this event. It was partly the realisation that the training was going to be very difficult and unpleasant and partly because I was wondering how I would get on with this odd ragbag of people and whether I was going to look stupid.
But by the end of the day I realised it was going to be a great adventure. Not only was our team beginning to bond, but I was appreciating what a challenge lay ahead of us all and how lucky I was to be being trained to do something that I previously no idea about.
Unsurprisingly given my marathon training I was pretty good on stamina, but I was fairly crap at technique. I even fell off my seat on the rowing machine which I didn't realise could happen. But if I hadn't been doing this I would probably have just sat at home and failed to write anything, whereas this was a full on interactive experience. We'd all started quite casually, saying we weren't too bothered about the race, but only a few hours later, as we appreciated the challenge ahead of us, there was much more of a desire to do well, to compete against the other team and (in terms of rowing machine times) each other. I think it's going to be a great experience for many reasons.
Reason one is Jonathan Aitken.
