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Fishy derring-do at Loch Fyne

Katie Grant

Tuesday, 1st July 2008

Katie Grant is inspired by a touching tale of struggle and triumph in a success story built on soggy foundations

A book about a company selling fish, without even any pictures, is an unlikely pick-up for those in search of adventure, but David Erdal’s account of the rise of Loch Fyne Oysters sent me on an adventure of my own. I live in Glasgow yet, disgracefully, had never eaten at the Loch Fyne Oyster Bar, one of Scotland’s most iconic success stories. I read Erdal, rounded up my family and got straight into the car.

The author has two goals: the first to chart, celebrate and reveal the struggles of the two men behind Loch Fyne Oysters – the flamboyant, charismatic, now sadly deceased Johnny Noble, for whom wine, or ‘pop’, was a breakfast drink, and Andrew Lane, a Nottinghamshire farm worker’s son, curiously described as having ‘normal instincts’. The second was to ‘spread the virus’ of employee ownership, the business model Loch Fyne Oysters eventually adopted with Erdal’s help. The book is, therefore, half a tale of fishy derring-do and half a messianic advertisement for employee trusts and if, unlike the oysters, the messianic advertisement is sometimes a little overcooked, this is entirely forgivable. If you love your product, naturally you want to sell it.

Though Erdal never met Johnny Noble, and was only contacted by Andy Lane when, after Noble’s death, the oysters were, as one might say, threatened by sharks, the three men shared a common vision: to prove that environmentally sustainable and community-friendly businesses can succeed.

It’s difficult to remember, in these bright green times, just how ridiculously touchy-feely, knit-your-own-sandals such a notion seemed in 1977 when Noble and Lane came up with the idea of growing oysters with ‘respect’ and only selling naturally caught fish. Not that Noble and Lane eschewed money. Both needed it, Noble to pay off the debts he inherited along with Ardkinglas, his Lorimer-built family home, and Lane to move out of a rickety caravan and pursue those ‘normal instincts’.

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