Now it's lochs, camera, tourist attraction

The Scottish tourism industry is cashing in on TV and film industry exposure, writes LOUISE JURY.

Scottish businesses are to use a gentle spoof of life on a Highlands country estate, starring Richard Briers, to attract overseas holidaymakers.

The Badenoch and Strathspey district of the Highlands is to be renamed "Monarch Country" after the BBC series Monarch of the Glen, which tells the story of cantankerous Hector MacDonald, played by Briers, and his fictional Glenbogle estate.

Tourism officials hope the connection will be as successful in boosting visits to the region as the movies Rob Roy and Braveheart, which sparked a surge of interest in Scotland in the 1990s.

Tourism employs 193,000 people in Scotland (8 per cent of the workforce) and 15 per cent of the workforce in the Highlands and Islands, where Monarch of the Glen is set.

It brings more than $8 billion into the Scottish economy, paying the wages of more people than the oil, gas and whisky industries combined.

"At the moment it's put us on the map," Patricia Eccles, co-chairwoman of the Monarch Initiative, says of the series. "Other areas have been quite spoilt by the success of a programme, but we want to use it to show the variety of what's here."

Peter Lederer, chairman of visitscotland, formerly known as the Scottish Tourist Board, says, "The success of the series has been massive and it gives this area of the Highlands and Scotland huge potential for attracting more visitors."

Ecosse Films, which is making a third series of Monarch of the Glen for the BBC, is among the businesses supporting the initiative. The first series has been sold to America, Canada and Australia. New Zealanders recently watched the second series.

When Burt Lancaster starred in Local Hero in 1983, visitors began to arrive to see the village where it was filmed, says Graham Birse, of visitscotland.

But in 1995 Rob Roy, starring Liam Neeson, Jessica Lange and Tim Roth, and Braveheart, for which its star Mel Gibson won an Oscar as best director, proved the breakthrough.

The marketing budget for Braveheart was about $125 million, with another $57 million spent promoting Rob Roy. "Those sums of money eclipse any money that might be available from the public purse to do the job," Birse says.

"Hundreds of millions of people in countries where we're not active, like South America and the Far East, are being exposed to an image of Scotland that is largely attractive and benign."

The Bollywood film industry is creating extra interest with about a dozen films set in Edinburgh. One of its big hits, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (Something Happened in My Heart), features sequences filmed at Loch Lomond and Glen Coe.

- INDEPENDENT