TELLY SPOTLIGHT ON ‘ORIGINAL FLASH DANCER’
SHE is the original “flash dancer” – the glamorous welder who found fame as a country and western star.
More than a decade before Jennifer Beals set pulses racing in the cult movie Flashdance, Heather Mackay was turning up the heat constructing North Sea oil rigs.
In the mid-70s the singer, who performed with The Dynamos Showband, swapped her microphone for a blowtorch and spent three years welding some of the largest oil platforms the world has ever seen.
Like Alex Bowens in the hit 1983 film, Heather thrived in the tough maledominated industry before going back to The Dynamos when the band turned professional. The unlikely welder, whose story features in BBC Scotland documentary Rigs of Nigg, said: “I am flattered and amused by the Flashdance comparisons. I wish.
“I suppose there is quite a contrast between being a country singer and a welder. Helping to build the rigs and being in the band were the happiest years of my life.”
In 1970, oil was discovered at the Forties Field in the North Sea. The UK needed huge rigs and needed them fast. Their search for a location to build the platforms settled on the sleepy Highland bay of Nigg on the Cromarty Firth.
Heather, who grew up in Helmsdale, Sutherland, was one of the 5000 men and women, sought locally and from around the globe, who came together to create structures previously thought to be unbuildable and to withstand elements considered unsurvivable.
She said: “When Highland Fabricators chose Nigg as the site to build the platforms it changed the lives of so many people living in an area where there were not many jobs apart from farming. The money was incredible and
I was wearing a mini dress... maybe that’s why I got the job HEATHER MACKAY ON BECOMING A WELDER
I decided I wanted a piece of it. My friend and I just walked up to the site and asked were there any jobs going?
“I was wearing a little white mini dress and a pair of six-inch white stilettos and my friend was wearing something similar. Maybe that’s why we got the job.” Heather, whose three brothers also worked at the yard, added: “I started off as a general worker and progressed to a welder’s helper – grinding pipes.
“I was then sent up to the training school for 12 weeks and at the end I managed to pass the same tests as the fully-qualified welders, who had come from all over the world to work at Nigg.
“It was hard, sweaty work but I loved every minute of it. The money was so good as well and you got paid the same as the men. I love a challenge and was quite happy to get stuck in.”
Heather, who has a son and two stepsons, said she had no trouble keeping up with her male counterparts
Glam welder Heather worked in 70s and on rigs found success and as a country western singer
and more often than not the women’s welding was neater.
She said: “I was the only girl in the band so I was used to being the only female. The men were always helpful and friendly but they did expect you to do your job as you were getting the same money as them.
“It was tough work and very warm. You had to wear suede jackets tied up to the neck, a helmet, mask and gloves up to the elbows. We worked 12-hour shifts, often through the night and at weekends.
“Women tend to have steadier hands from knitting and the like so our work was always neater – I’m not saying the men’s wasn’t but the women’s tended to be immaculate.”
Taller than the Eiffel Tower and St Paul’s Cathedral, the Highlander platforms were made from more steel than the Forth Bridge.
Heather, who lives in Dornoch with her partner of 50 years Ian Longmuir, said: “As the rigs got taller, the higher we would have to go. Working at heights of more than 400 feet was scary. I remember the first time I went right to the top. There was just three wooden planks under your feet and a six-inch pipe at waist height to hold on to. It was terrifying but it’s amazing how quickly you get used to it.”
Heather, who is now a senior nurse working between Golspie Community Hospital and Raigmore in Inverness, recalls the time she set her hair on fire. She said: “I was crouching inside a massive pipe that had been sectioned off. I was welding above my head. I should have been wearing a suede hat under my mask but my hair was so thick and wild.
“Suddenly I felt a heat flaring up the side of my cheek. I looked down and realised my hair had caught fire from one of the sparks.
“Another time I was gouging and I forgot to tie the top button on my coat. I ended up with a massive blister on my chest caused by the heat and the glare from the torch.”
Heather, who worked on Highlander One, Two and Three, admitted one of the proudest moments of her life was watching the first platform being floated out of the bay on its way to the offshore oil field.
She said: “The launch of Highlander One in 1974 was very special. People flocked from all around to watch as it was sent on its way. It was an amazing feeling to watch this huge structure that you had helped build heading on its way.”
Tonight’s hour-long documentary, filmed by Bafta-winning director Don Coutts, reflects on the heady days of the Nigg yard. Using old film and modern interviews from the men and women who were there, it focuses on the jobs and wealth it brought to an area more used to a simpler way of life.
Families counted their blessings in bulging wage packets – one wife tells how her husband’s salary leapt from just £12 a week to £50, allowing the family to dine out on as much luxury ice cream as they wanted.
While fabrication work continued for almost 30 years, contracts eventually dried up. Heather, who hasn’t ruled out a return to singing, said: “It must have been terrible for the people who still worked there when the yard closed. For a community that had prospered in so many ways thanks to the number of people it brought to the area, its closure hit the locals hard.”
Thankfully there is a glimmer of hope as Global Energy have returned to the site with a vision of making it the UK’s leading renewables hub for the construction of wind and tidal turbine foundations.
Heather, who released several LPs and toured around the UK, said: “I am pleased there is work coming back to Nigg. The yard, the people I met and the work I did will always hold a special place in my heart.
“As a wee girl I dreamed of being a singer but never a welder but I’m glad I got the chance to do both.”
Rigs of Nigg is on BBC Scotland tonight at 10pm.