On Lewis, Eilbheas has left the building

AFTER getting over the crushing disappointment that Alba TV would not, after all, be a network entirely devoted to the gorgeous Hollywood actress Jessica Alba, I pressed "select" on channel 168 and waited for the revolution to begin.

BBC Alba, Britain's first Gaelic station, duly launched on time on Friday night, without any cock-up, as a stirring song was belted out by gap-toothed kids, goths, and doughty defenders of the language who must have thought they'd never live to see this day.

What's Gaelic for "cock-up", or is it just cock-up? In Eilbheas, the set-piece drama for the first night, the actors had their own special way of saying "kiss my ass" but, curiously, not "arsehole". Before that, there was a ceilidh, a thrash metal one, on a set that gave the impression we were deep in the bowels of a giant Dalek.

After the band Skipinnish narrowly failed to beat their own land-speed record for a jig, the presenter of this programme did a stint as a singer. Doubtless BBC Alba is a tightly run affair. Maybe in weeks to come we'll see newsreaders double as children's hour clowns and the chief executive manning the front desk in a gold-braided jacket to log viewer complaints.

But there were none from me about Eilbheas, which had production values the equal of any drama made by BBC Scotland or STV (not that there's a super-abundance of them), and maintained the evening's musical theme by recreating Elvis Presley's secret mission to Lewis.

The year was 1977 and the King (Chewin' The Fat's Greg Hemphill) had copped his whack only to re-emerge as a guardian angel for 17-year-old Tonaidh after the troubled lad's failed attempt to OD on his mum's angina tablets. "Rock 'n' roll" in Gaelic is rock 'n' roll, and "punk" is punk. Tonaidh (Sean MacLeod) was Lewis's only punk rocker and until Elvis's intervention he'd struggled to make himself understood to his parents, the local beauty just back from college, everyone.

This quirky tale was told with stunning imagery and a terrific soundtrack (including Pink Floyd's 'Us And Them' in the week of its composer Rick Wright's death). The language only made our land seem even more exotic. Kiss my ass, as they say in Gaelic.