Ewan McGregor vows to join record-breaking brothers on water after epic Pacific challenge
Ewan McGregor has backed a trio of brothers aiming to raise £1million on a record-breaking row across the Pacific - and vowed to join them on the water when they return to Scotland.
Brothers Ewan, Jamie and Lachlan Maclean are currently aiming to row 14,000km from Peru to Australia in a boat they built themselves - faster than anyone ever has before.
Last weekend marked 100 days of their non-stop, unsupported row to raise money for clean water projects in Madagascar.
In a chat with the brothers, McGregor has now revealed plans to join the Maclean Brothers for a row on their return to Scotland, inspired by their extraordinary ocean crossing.
The A-list actor told how he had dreamed of an ocean journey ever since reading about early solo circumnavigations of the globe.
"I've no idea what it feels like to be where you are now," he told the brothers in a call from London, "but I've always dreamed about it.
"The documentary you made about crossing the Atlantic was fantastic. I thought it was brilliant. I watched it because I've got a little plan.
"I'm not particularly interested in breaking records or being the first person to do something. I think that's all amazing and great. But where is adventure in our time, when most things have already been done?"
"What I'd like is to find out what it feels like. And I'm sure where you are right now is as close to the pinnacle of adventure as you can get - because you're just out there on your own, the three of you.
"There's no help if you need it. You're totally self-reliant. It's so fucking impressive. I'm really inspired by the three of you. It's incredible."
Join the Daily Record WhatsApp community!
Get the latest news sent straight to your messages by joining our WhatsApp community today.
You'll receive daily updates on breaking news as well as the top headlines across Scotland.
No one will be able to see who is signed up and no one can send messages except the Daily Record team.
All you have to do is click here if you're on mobile, select 'Join Community' and you're in!
If you're on a desktop, simply scan the QR code above with your phone and click 'Join Community'.
We also treat our community members to special offers, promotions, and adverts from us and our partners. If you don't like our community, you can check out any time you like.
To leave our community click on the name at the top of your screen and choose 'exit group'.
If you're curious, you can read our Privacy Notice.
On Sunday, Ewan, Jamie and Lachlan Maclean marked 100 days since leaving Peru on a rowing boat set for Australia. Now approaching Fiji, this crossing has been incredibly tough as they navigate salt sores, sleep deprivation, horrendous weather and isolation. It's all to raise £1M for clean water projects in Madagascar.
The Trainspotting and Star Wars star shared with them a story from Norway, where a young fan approached him and Charley Boorman to thank them for their films.
He said: "This guy in his early 20s came up to us and said, 'I watched your show lying on my dad's lap when I was a kid - and that's why I'm doing this.' We couldn't believe how old it made us feel. But I just love it."
He added "In this world where we're increasingly just looking down at our phones, I love the idea of encouraging people to get out and see it."
The conversation - during which McGregor quizzed the brothers on everything from energy sources to toilet tactics - began with Jamie playing McGregor Amazing Grace on the bagpipes.
Jamie, 31, also confided in Ewan about his nerves over playing the pipes on arrival in Australia - just as they did when they arrived in Antigua when the brothers broke three world records crossing the Atlantic Ocean in 2020.
"I'm more worried about my lips going," he said. "By the time we get to Australia, we'll have rowed halfway around the world. If I can't play them when we arrive, it's a bit of a disaster. Just dribbling down my front."
The call ended with a promise. "When we finally make it home," said middle brother Jamie, "because we will be bringing the boat back to Scotland - let's go for a row, if you're up for it. Loch Lomond, the west coast - wherever you're based."
Join the Daily Record WhatsApp community!
Get the latest news sent straight to your messages by joining our WhatsApp community today.
You'll receive daily updates on breaking news as well as the top headlines across Scotland.
No one will be able to see who is signed up and no one can send messages except the Daily Record team.
All you have to do is click here if you're on mobile, select 'Join Community' and you're in!
If you're on a desktop, simply scan the QR code above with your phone and click 'Join Community'.
We also treat our community members to special offers, promotions, and adverts from us and our partners. If you don't like our community, you can check out any time you like.
To leave our community click on the name at the top of your screen and choose 'exit group'.
If you're curious, you can read our Privacy Notice.
"I'd love that," McGregor replied. "I'd absolutely love that."
The brothers' 28ft carbon fibre boat, Rose Emily, is named in memory of their late sister. As it has no engine and no sail, the brothers are pulling their way across the ocean in two-hour shifts.
The trio from Edinburgh broke records in January 2020, when they became the first three brothers to row across any ocean, and the youngest and fastest trio to row across the Atlantic ocean in their 35 day trip.
Now, in a journey they have called the Rare Whisky 101 Pacific Row, they hope to become the quickest to cross the Pacific in just 120 days - 42 days quicker than the current record.
The brothers have raised around £218,000 so far.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Spectator
2 hours ago
- Spectator
Tedious, lazy and pretentious – Irvine Welsh's Men in Love is a disgrace
There are 32 years between the publication of Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting and his Men in Love – a gap roughly equivalent to that between Sgt. Pepper and 'Windowlicker' by Aphex Twin. Perhaps three cultural generations. It is disturbing, therefore, to find Welsh still pumping out further sequels to his spectacular literary debut. But whereas that had verbal fireworks, razor-sharp dialogue, superb character ventriloquism and a fearless examination of Scottish moral rot, Men in Love is – let's be frank – tedious, lazy, pretentious and simply bad writing. Under the influence of American Psycho, Welsh has had characters narrating their fleeting perceptions since Filth (1998), in the hope that accumulation will create meaning. But where Bret Easton Ellis is satirising the vicious lizard-brain petulance of the 1 per cent, Welsh now simply takes you with the narrator on increasingly pointless journeys. The result is entire chapters that feel redundant and anti-plots that seem to build to something before ending in irritating anti-climaxes. (The Renton-Begbie confrontation in 2002's Porno was so bad that I wondered whether a refusal to climax was a meta joke.) Trainspotting vibrated with malevolent vernacular energy, but the prequels and sequels have seen Welsh lose his ventriloquial gift. This was already apparent in Porno, where Nikki's speech at the end was pure authorial intervention as she tells us What It All Meant. From Skagboys (2012) onwards, Renton, Sick Boy, Spud and even Begbie have been articulating their thoughts in increasingly florid sentences, as if Welsh were trying to impress us with his new-found vocabulary. But it doesn't impress. Of course, part of the pleasure of reading Welsh was how he combined the demotic and the cerebral. But the writing in Men in Love can be as clumsy and self-regarding as undergraduate poetry. For instance, Spud thinks that 'she should pure huv the vocabulary tae express hersel withoot recourse tae foul language'. Without recourse, aye? The once-fearsome Begbie, meanwhile: Now he was outside and it was Saturday, drifting into late afternoon, a time Begbie found replete with opportunities for violence. Potential adversaries were out, some since Friday after work. Many of those boys acquiring the delicious bold-but-sloppy combination that would service his chaotic outpourings. He found them replete, did he? He had chaotic outpourings, did he? And the sex writing – 'in languid, ethereal movements she groans in soft tones', for example – is excruciating. Another key weakness of Men in Love is how many earlier beats it replays. Sick Boy is involved with porn films and pimping; women magically fall under his spell; and he outplays a privileged male competitor (this time his father-in-law, a Home Office civil servant). Renton gets into nightclubs and DJ-ing. Spud is a romantic loser. Begbie is still psychotically aggressive. All of which we've seen in Porno, The Blade Artist and Dead Men's Trousers. The record is stuck. The heartbreaking thing is there's a good novel to be written about the punk/smack generation of the early 1980s encountering the ecstasy love-buzz period as the decade progressed. But Welsh has signally failed to tackle any of that. He could have taken them to Ibiza, the Hacienda or Spike Island, or considered the achievements and failures of the Love Generation Mk II. But no. It's another lazy retread. The impression one gets from Men in Love is that of Fat Elvis, sweating and unknowingly self-parodic in Las Vegas. Welsh desperately needs an editor with the guts to tell him this schtick isn't working any more. To quote Melody Maker on David Bowie: 'Sit down, man, you're a fucking disgrace.'
The Herald Scotland
2 hours ago
- The Herald Scotland
'Hopeless romantic' Welsh sends his gang looking for love
But it is the characters he created for Trainspotting that he keeps returning to – even if their latest adventures may be something of a departure for Renton, Sick Boy, Spud and Begbie. Read more: The fourth sequel to Trainspotting, which picks up shortly after the end of the first novel, sees them leaving heroin behind in pursuit of romance and raves. And Welsh has admitted he has drawn on his own experience as a 'pretty hopeless romantic' for the novel, which sees the characters seeking sex and looking for love in London, Amsterdam, Paris and their home city of Edinburgh, where Welsh suddenly emerged as a major new literary voice in the early 1990s. Irvine Welsh shot to fame with his debut novel Trainspotting in 1993. (Image: Getty) Within three years of Trainspotting's publication, it had been turned into an acclaimed feature film starring Ewan McGregor, Robert Carlyle, Ewen Bremner and Jonny Lee Miller, who were reunited in 2016 for a sequel set around 20 years on from the original. Men In Love, Welsh's latest novel, is the second Trainspotting novel since the movie sequel, although the new book unfolds as the 1980s are drawing to a close with Margaret Thatcher still Prime Minister and rave culture sweeping the UK. Welsh said: 'I've never really left these characters behind. They are in my head as the go-to guys that I'm always writing stories about to try to understand the world. 'To write a novel I really need to have a theme. I really wanted to write a positive book as there is so much hate in the world just now. I wanted to get people thinking about the more emotional and romantic side of life.' Welsh has been working on Men In Love since getting married for a third time, in 2022. He said: 'I was thinking back to that era when guys in their twenties first get serious about romance and their partner becomes more important than their mates, but they are not really equipped for it. 'I was looking back and thinking about how useless most guys are at that time. I thought I'd get the most useless guys of all and see how they shape up. 'I think I've always been quite serious about relationships. I was always obsessed with any women who were daft enough to go out with me. I've always been a pretty hopeless romantic at heart.' Welsh, who worked in Edinburgh City Council's housing department before pursuing a career as a writer, said he had never intended to create a whole series of books on the Trainspotting characters. The author told The Herald: 'I don't know if it is a blessing or a curse, but I have always lived in the present. I don't really have the ability to look back or forward. 'When I go out with pals they come out with all these stories and tell me what I was wearing 35 years ago. I can't even remember what colour of underpants I put on in the morning. 'I always said in the past that I was done with the characters from Trainspotting, but I'm not going to say that now. I will probably revisit them again. 'But I've just written a contemporary book, which is coming out next year, which is set in Las Vegas and has a whole new cast of characters. It's a very different book, which has been incredibly freeing to write.' While his new book offers Welsh's fans a nostalgic trip, the author bemoans the impact of new technology on younger generations, society, culture and nightlife. The author said: 'Things have changed massively, when I think about the freedom that we had. We could do anything. 'The internet was supposed to be this great liberation, but it's become such an intrusive and confining thing now. We are being monitored all the time and we are policing each other. 'I do think about how much more boring my life would have been if we had had the internet, surveillance technology and all that kind of stuff back then. I do really feel for the youth of today. They are not really allowed to transgress in any way. 'Nobody has really got money to do anything now. That's the main reason pubs are shutting down. 'So many music and literature festivals have shut down this summer because people just don't have the money to go to them. 'The internet is also driving us to a post-culture society where a lot of people, particularly working-class people, are not engaging in culture in any way. It's a horrible development.' Welsh's interest in music has seen him co-write a Trainspotting stage musical, which is hoped to be launched next year, and release a disco-inspired Men In Love album to coincide with the release of his new novel. After his book launches in Edinburgh and Glasgow this week, he will also be performing late-night DJ sets at the official after-parties. Welsh will also be making further appearances in his home city over the next few weeks, with a Men In Love book festival event and the world premiere of a new documentary, Reality Is Not Enough, made by Edinburgh-based filmmaker Paul Sng, who followed the author around the world for more than a year. The film, which is described as 'a gripping and revealing deep dive' into the mind of the author, is said to find Welsh 'at a crossroads, acutely aware of his own mortality.' Welsh said: 'By god, it makes me look interesting, which is quite an achievement. 'You spend so much time in your own head, you don't really perceive of yourself as someone who has an interesting life. 'You are in all these locations, talking to different people and doing different things. You don't really think of it as being particularly glamorous as you are transit all the time. 'But I have met so many interesting people down the years. 'In some ways, watching the documentary was like meeting a version of myself for the first time.' Welsh is launching Men In Love days before the main Edinburgh Festival season gets underway. He said: 'It's great that the Festival happens, but the downside of it is that we put all our eggs into the one cultural basket. It's an importation. There's not really a living, breathing thing going in the town.'
Scotsman
8 hours ago
- Scotsman
What's on in Edinburgh today? 10 events to enjoy including Trainspotting sequel launch
1 . Irvine Welsh Men in Love Q&A and Exclusive Launch Party Celebrating the release of his new Trainspotting sequel Men in Love, Scottish author Irvine Welsh will participate in a Q&A with Jenni Fagan early in the evening, before heading over to Leith Arches for an exclusive launch party. The Q&A will take place at Ps and Gs Church on York Place from 7.30pm, with the album launch party kicking off from 8pm until 1am, and featuring the Sci Fi Soul Orchestra, Carl Loben, Steve Mac and more, with a limited number of exclusive vinyl and CD editions available on the night. | LISA FERGUSON Photo: Lisa Ferguson
