WHEN a Hollywood giant wishes to bestow a gift on a friend they usually favour fruit baskets, flowers or perhaps, in exceptional circumstances, the keys to a gleaming new Cadillac.
Oscar-winning Russell Crowe, however, has never been the conventional movie star, which is why he has presented Charlie Allan, a Scots battle re-enactor, with a five-ton medieval battering ram.
The replica siege engine, fresh from the set of Robin
Hood, the actor's latest £100 million blockbuster, will next year take pride of place outside Duncarron, an ambitious reconstruction of a 12th-century wooden fort being built in the Carron Valley.
The £60,000 wooden construction, which is eight metres long, is expected to help lure visitors to the fort and help raise money for the project.
It was used in a scene in which King Richard, played by Danny Huston, is returning from the crusades in the Holy Land, requires money and so lays siege to a French Norman castle. The film will be released next year.
The battering ram is proof of an unlikely friendship forged in the heat of ancient – if faked – battles, warmed over barbecue steaks and nurtured by a shared love of Harley Davidson motorcycles.
Allan, the chief executive of the Clanranald Trust, a battle re-enactment group, first met Crowe while filming Gladiator in 1997, when he played a bearded German barbarian who is seen in the finished film raising up the severed head of a Roman negotiator. While waiting to film one scene, the pair discovered a shared passion for American motorcycles and became friends.
Earlier this year they were reunited on the set of Robin Hood, which was filmed in Farnham in Surrey, directed by Ridley Scott and also starring Cate Blanchett. While chatting over a barbecue served between shots, Allan brought him up to date with the development of Duncarron, a huge motte and bailey fort and the actor suggested he would try to secure some of the props.
"We were tucking into these big steaks and he suggested getting hold of a few of the props," Allan said. "I was eyeing up the tents and so he told me to go speak to the producer. The next day he came back to me and said he had been lying awake and thought it would be easier if he spoke on our behalf.
"He was quite excited with a big grin on his face. He then pointed to the battering ram and said: 'She's all yours, mate.' Then he said that he would cover all the costs of shifting it up. What a fantastic gesture."
Allan spent seven weeks on the set of Robin Hood with 60 fellow fighters, and a large proportion of their earnings has been ploughed into the costs of building Duncarron. The Clanranald Trust, based in Kincardine-on-Forth, was formed 13 years ago specifically to build the fort, which will serve as a tourism and heritage centre.
The trust hopes it will also be used as a film set, a venue for weddings and corporate events, a base for craft workers and an educational resource. To date it has spent more than £350,000 building the fort, a cost which excludes labour provided free of charge by volunteers. However, the organisation believes it still needs £250,000 more to finish the project.
Doing battle re-enactment for films and at fetes and festivals has helped to raise funds for the fort, as has the trust's own five-piece pipe and drum band, Saor Patrol, which has performed all over the world.
"We plan to open the fort in May, even if it's not completely finished by then," said Allan. "As with most things, money's the issue. As a charity we do not intend to get into debt and have to rely on our own efforts and the kindness of others, to raise cash. We need more people like Russell Crowe on our side."
As well as calling on its own volunteers to help with construction, the trust has had the assistance of Territorial Army pioneers and of a group of 12 Scots history and culture enthusiasts from Switzerland, where Highland games have a large following.
It has also had help from young offenders in a scheme organised by North Lanarkshire Community Service.
Allan, a piper with Saor Patrol, added that Crowe has already asked them to play support for his own band, The Ordinary Fear of God, when it tours the UK next year. In the meantime, the Clanranald Trust will continue their mission to educate, and still regularly visit schools to teach children about Scottish history.
Among their latest jobs were re-acting the Battle of Culloden for continuous screening at the visitor centre near the battlefield and, similarly, doing a Bannockburn re-enactment for a film being shown at the National Trust for Scotland's Bannockburn centre.
Next month, a 30-strong Clanranald combat team will take part in the filming of the Roman epic adventure, The Eagle of the Ninth, set in second-century Britain and based on the unexplained disappearance of an entire Roman legion in the mountains of Scotland.
