News / Kirk ministers on telly
TWO SHETLAND-based Church of Scotland ministers are to have their life and work showcased in a forthcoming BBC TV show.
Reverend David Cooper, minister for Unst, Fetlar and Yell, and Reverend Irene Charlton, minister for Whalsay, will appear on the tenth series of BBC2 programme ‘An Island Parish’ as it follows the lives of island residents over a period of several months.
Filmmakers from Tiger Aspect Productions are expected to arrive in Shetland in the next month to begin filming. The programmes, which have previously chronicled life in Barra, Sark and the Falkland Islands, introduce several regular characters and follow them through different seasonal activities.
Rev Cooper has been minister for the united parish of Unst and Fetlar for the last seven years. He is also minister for the parish of Yell, where he lives, travelling to the other islands to hold services and work with his congregations.
“It’s a life determined by ferry timetables,” he says. “So, for example, the Kirk Session meets at 7.15 because I will be getting the five to seven ferry from Yell.
“And we must finish by twenty past eight so that I can catch the quarter to nine ferry back. If I miss that the next ferry is not until 10.30. It’s a good discipline for us all.”
Rev Charlton grew up in Haddington, East Lothian, but moved to Whalsay with her husband more than 17 years ago.
Seasonal fishing and farming and events such as the annual Whalsay Regatta mean the filmmakers won’t be short of subject matter.
“They are interested in the whole life of the place,” Charlton says. “Church members will be part of that because nothing that happens on the island happens without church members, whatever name they are working under. The church is the heart of the island.”
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