Steve
Mac v’s Big Brother…
Nearly a month ago, ‘bat
hanging’ Steve McClure hit the national press; the event,
as you all know, was his ascent of Overshadow 9a+, his latest
and hardest super-route, at Malham Cove. For once, a domestic
climbing event got significant national press column inches.
 A colleague of mine, who has forgotten more about
the press biz than I’ll every know, seemed positively enthusiastic
when I reeled off the list of papers that had carried to story.
Despite his enthusiasm, I was a bit hacked off that some of the
other big papers haven’t also drunk from the McClure font.
My colleague (strongly) contested that coverage in five nationals,
supported by two on-line editions, was in fact, something of a
scoop. To be fair, that was exactly what the press agency had said
when I’d spoken to them. When you get the same message from
a completely different source, you have to start to believe.
 I ought to confess right now that the idea of
going for national coverage was mine and not Steve’s. If
it has offended you then your beef is with me. My defence is simple.
Steve is one heck of a climber and he’d just done what history
is likely to take as the UK’s hardest every sport route.
Inf act I’m sure that Overshadow stands head and shoulders
alongside the mega routes of the world’s top ten. IMHO therefore
I felt that both the route and Steve should get max coverage. I
wanted the story to go to as wide an audience as possible to the
benefit of both Steve and our sport. It would of course be entirely
disingenuous if I should pretend, for even a second, that I didn’t
also enjoy the resultant exposure for my photographs. There might
even be a few quid involved as well, but none of us will be driving
new BMWs as a result I can assure you! So there you have it, my
confession and my drivers.
Back to the coverage. Reaching for his calculator
said press mate started hammering the keys in a frenzy. “I
make that about 8 million Opportunities to See”. “Good
one”, he qualified. I smiled the smile of the ignorant man. “OK”,
I said after what seemed like an age; “what the flippin’ heck
are you taking about”? He explained. “Take the circulation
of each newspaper, multiply it by two and you have the OTS”.
So that was it. He continued, “don’t forget either
the Online editions give you OTV”. “Opportunities to
View”, I offered? A thumbs-up confirmed that I’d correctly
guessed the acronym. “B*ll*cks”, I said, “sounds
like pseudo marketing babble”.
 We could discuss the merits of the OTS/V if we
were so driven, but with close on about ten million OTS/V, we were
on a roll. In recent memory, I can’t think of many such domestic
climbing events that had gonnen such column space. (Press aficionados
will, of course, correct me here…) Then there’s the
climbing press and websites to add. Now climbing isn’t the
biggest sport in the world as we all know, and without Dissing
our sport, even with the best will in the world we aren’t
going to muster anywhere like the OTS/V figures that the nationals
had generated.
Whatever the figures, whatever the coverage, I
thought it was great to see domestic climbing getting press. Last
year of course we were treated to Leo Holding and Tim Emmett racing
Lord Clarkson of Top Gear in the Verdon. Leo and Tim where dynoing
and cranking like lunes; “it’s climbing but not like
we know it Jim”! For their part in the coverage of Steve’s
new route, the national press had zeroed-in on Steve the ‘bat
hanger’. There was obviously much more to Steve’s route
than that, but as UKC News Ed said, pitch the story about a 100
foot long route with crimps the size of a Macdo chip and I’ll
wager that the OTS/V would be flat-lining somewhere around zilch!
More than a few folk (climbers, sponsored climbers
and companies) have rung me for a chat since Steve appeared in
the papers. To a one they all have one question; “how did
you pull that off?” ”Easy”, I say, “take
one of the hardest climbs in the country, take one of the best
climbers in the country, take a few snaps, zip them over to an
agency and hope like hell that Big Brother is having a quite day!
 There is of course a bit more to it than that
but these are the essential ingredients. News being news, you have
to move fast. Just three days after Steve nailed the first ascent
we were back to get the photos. The weather didn’t exactly
help; it was p*ssing it down when we arrived at The Cove! Friends
at the crag (Pete Chadwick, Steve Dunning and Nigel Smart - thanks
guys) belayed Steve whilst I, hanging off a 100m static (thanks
SlackJaw) spun in space and wrestled with jumars, quickdraws and
what felt like a ton of camera gear, got on with the business of
image capture. As the honourable UKC News Ed had quoted me earlier,
I shot 9GB of images on the day, i.e. about 400 individual images
shooting in both RAW and low quality JPEG on my Nikon D2x.
That’s about 11 films worth in old money. Back home, it took
a couple of hours to review the images and another couple of hours
tweaking the low resolution JPEGs, along with some mid-night oil,
before I could email a two dozen images to the agency to choose
from. That, of course, is the real beauty of shooting digital; ‘shoot-it,
then use-it’ straight off!
Another essential ingredient was, of course, the
pitch. So what angle to push? Steve had hung off his toes most
of the winter down at the Foundry training for the ‘bat hang’ on
Overshadow just as he trained every other conceivable aspect that
he thought would give him the edge. The ‘bat hang’ angle
was a means to an end, to Steve on the route and to the story for
the press. A ‘News Release’ and several phone calls
were the final pieces of the jigsaw. It was all down to others
then, we had done our bit.
So what was the outcome? Well bat hanging and
OTS/V aside, climbing got press. How bad can that be? There will
be those amongst us that don’t want climbing turned in a
media circus; there will those amongst us that thirst for more
coverage and obviously there will be those amongst us that don’t
care either way! The best thing about climbing is that everyone
is free to enjoy their own climbing in their own way. The quiet,
remote ascent that goes un-noticed, un-recorded and is to all intents
and purposes unremarkable, or else the high profile ascent of Overshadow
with an attendant film crew against a backdrop of a crag-full of
sport climbers. Not that Steve is looking for that kind ‘following’ on
a regular basis, if at all. As an aside, it was awesome though
that they all stopped and watched as Steve nailed his project.
The cheer that when up from the Cat Walk audience when Steve clipped
the lower-off was spontaneous and totally genuine. And SlackJaw
were there to get the whole thing on film - well HDV actually.
Nice one Rich and Ben – bring on the film asap!
Finally, a ‘big up’ to Steve; suck
it in man, you desired the exposure and cred.. On June 4th 2007,
a week to the day after his epoch ascent, you took on Big Brother
in the press and won. The day before or the day after it might
have been be a different story. That it seems, is the Press Biz!
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