ONE MAN AND HIS DOGS
Editor Richard Bath talks with sports commentator Andrew Cotter about his internet sensation, hounds Olive and Mabel
During lockdown I was on the phone catching up with an old university friend who lives near Geneva. She asked what I’d been up to and I told her I’d just been chatting to Andrew Cotter. Cue an audible uptick in interest. ‘What, you mean the guy who owns Olive and Mabel?’ she asked excitedly. ‘We all love him!’ The ‘we’ turned out to be not just her immediate dog-owning family, but her aged parents in Connecticut, her younger sister in Rome, her older sister in upstate New York. Her in-laws are pretty partial too, she said, as are most of her friends in the small French town of Divonne-lesBains, while half of her colleagues at the UN are Cotter crazy.
The heady mix of lockdown, two achingly cute labradors and the sports commentator’s immediately recognisable Ayrshire tones have made the Scotsman into something of an internet sensation.
At a time when the world sorely needed a distraction from the straitjacket of lockdown, his wholesome homilies were a soothing balm for our frazzled souls. Initially designed as nothing more than a way to relieve his boredom on interminable walks, they struck a chord with dog lovers the world over. But what began as a tongue-in-cheek way to pass the time has had huge real-world ramifications: Cotter’s dog-walking commentaries have been watched almost 90 million times online and have spawned two books, the hugely enjoyable Olive, Mabel & Me, and the soon-to-be-published Dog Days: A Diary of Modern Life.
‘This has all come as such a surprise, it’s not something that feels normal,’ laughs Cotter. ‘I see Olive and Mabel as our dogs so I find it very
“What, you mean the guy who owns Olive and Mabel? We all love him...
difficult to see them as celebrities, but we’ve just been for a walk in the woods and they’ve been stopped twice so they have twin lives.’
As an established sports commentator covering major events for the BBC, Cotter already had a measure of fame but is in danger of being eclipsed by his hounds. Every walk is now an obstacle course of admirers seeking selfies. Occasionally the odd dog walker even wants to speak to Cotter himself.
‘So many people ask for photos,’ he says. ‘It’s bizarre but then Olive and Mabel really cheered people up during these tough times. They’re very silly videos but there’s a more serious side to it which is the message coming back from people. More than anything else people are saying “I’ve been cheered up and your two dogs are part of it”. I’m never included in that, it’s always the two dogs – I’m the extra in the videos.
‘It’s the year of the dog – it’s been extraordinary. A perfect storm of reasons came together to make the videos so successful. A key factor is that people have really been focusing on their dogs, which have often been their main form of escape. They see dogs with their innocence and their optimism and their sense of fun, and it’s so detached from all the awfulness that’s going on in the world. We see dogs and we think that’s a little escape for me; it might be a dog in my house or a dog I’m watching in a video – it’s an escape into the wonderful world of dogs.’
Dogs have always been an integral part of Cotter’s world, especially when growing up in Troon, where his early years set
a blueprint for the 47-year-old’s life. ‘My childhood was very outdoorsy, very doggy, very sporty,’ he says. ‘We had lots of dogs in the family at various points, and in various creeds and colours. Mine was just a normal west of Scotland childhood, playing outdoors in the rain and climbing a few hills, playing a bit of rugby and walking a few dogs.’
Those three loves – sport, the outside and his pooches – have combined to give him a career as a sports commentator, a love of Scotland’s wild places, and, most unexpectedly, the status of lockdown legend. Sport has been a constant theme to his life, and although he now commentates on the full smorgasbord of BBC blue-ribband events – from rugby’s Six Nations and golf’s Majors and Ryder Cup, to Wimbledon, the Olympics and Commonwealth Games, and even the Boat Race; in fact virtually everything except football – it was a love of the links which defined his early years.
‘I’m a retired golfer, someone who played too much golf as a youngster,’ says Cotter, who in his youth represented Scottish Schools and Scottish Students. ‘Golf was everything to me when I was young. I wanted to be a golfer and I was only held back by not being good enough.’
He learned the game at Barassie Links near Troon, a hotbed of talented young Ayrshire golfers like Gordon Sherry. When Cotter began to experience golf courses outside of Scotland, he realised just how blessed he had been to learn the game at a community club where juniors were positively welcomed.
‘Barassie was fantastic because it had none of the pomp of other clubs,’ says Cotter. ‘A lot of clubs around the world tend to be pompous and exclusive but in Scotland golf is quite an egalitarian sport. I try to explain to people in the home counties of England, where it is an exclusive sport, that in Scotland and certainly in Ayrshire, everyone plays football or rugby in the winter and then golf in the summer.”
Growing up, family holidays at Lochranza on nearby Arran allowed the commentator to combine his love of the mountains and his youthful obsession with golf. He would play at the quirky Corrie course while looking up at the mountains whose foothills come right down to the course. One day he would play golf, the next he would go walking. They are memories which conjure up a strong nostalgia of good times for Cotter.
‘There’s a great sketch from Limmy [Scottish comedian Brian Limond] that’s funny but also one of the most touching sketches I’ve ever seen,’ he says. ‘It’s about going to Millport [on the Isle of Cumbrae in Ayrshire]. Limmy went to the ticket office in Glasgow and said “how do I get there?’ and he picks up a postcard of Millport and the woman says “oh you get the train down to Largs and the ferry across”. And he goes “no, how do I get there, to that exact time and place?”
‘That’s what you want, to go back to that time in your childhood and that place where you’re playing golf as a child at Corrie golf course. Those are just the best memories, and that’s why Corrie is special to me because holidays on Arran were such a special time, playing golf until it went dark, serenaded by the sound of the sea and flanked by the Devil’s Punchbowl and Sannox Ridge.’
That nostalgic streak was given full rein during the seemingly endless lockdown when Cotter, who is now based in Cheshire but makes multiple trips back to Scotland each year to ensure he gets his fix of the hills, was prevented from travelling north of the border.
‘I missed the hills so much,’ he said. ‘Throughout lockdown I was counting the days until I was able to get back into the Cairngorms. In the grand scheme of things it’s not important at all, but this winter has seen some of the best snow conditions ever and it’s irked me because I know how socially distanced you are in the mountains.
‘I don’t go climbing in the summer at all really, when there’s midges and masses of people, but I missed it more than I can say this winter. I was counting the days until I could go up and get Olive and Mabel out there and just escape from it all. There’s no place I’d rather be.’
In the summer Cotter tends to leave his dogs behind as he heads west and climbs classic but technically demanding peaks like the Cuillins on Skye or An Teallach just south of Ullapool. They are ‘beautiful but rather terrifying climbs where you’ve got a bit of exposure, a bit of fear, a bit of excitement’.
These are some of his favourite days on the hill but because such ascents demand actual rock climbing, the mutts are surplus to requirements. In the winter, however, he heads east.
‘When I go to the hills in winter, the more round mountains the further east you go actually come alive and are
I missed the hills so much in lockdown. I was literally counting the days until I could get back