Lorraine Kelly’s ‘curry night’ with Pacific Ocean rowers – 6000 miles out to sea

THE heroic Maclean brothers hosted two celebrity dinner guests this week – as they continue to row across the Pacific Ocean.

Ewan, 33, Jamie, 32, and Lachlan, 28, have passed Day 80 of their record breaking voyage from Peru to their final destination in Australia.

Three men standing on a rowing boat, wearing matching t-shirts.
The Maclean Brothers are aiming for the record books.
Two men at sea holding a foil packet.
The rowers had their freeze dried meal at the same time as their dinner date Lorraine.
Collage of two men; one smiling outdoors on a boat, the other indoors looking serious.
Hollywood star Mark Wahlberg has now video called the Scots twice.
Man with gray beard and yellow sunglasses laughing in a video call.
Greg Hemphill had a host of questions for the rowers.

But Lorraine Kelly and Still Game’s Greg Hemphill both joined the lads as virtual dinner dates to help boost their morale.

ITV host Lorraine tucked into a freeze dried ruby chicken curry with the lads who were over 10,000miles away from her London base.

Initially she described their food as looking “disgusting” but was soon won over saying it tasted “really nice”.

While Greg, 55, who played Craiglang’s Victor McDade, wanted to know what the Macleans have to drink, asking: “Have you had any alcohol on board?”

Jamie replied: “We’ve got a couple of cans of beer. We had one of them already. But I think there would be cause for a mutiny if the chocolate runs out.”

Greg then confessed that he would like to join them for a leg of their trip.

He told them: “I’m an old man of the sea. I have my day skipper licence.

“I think I must have been an old sailor in the past and would have joined the navy for sure.  

“But what you are doing is above and beyond all that.”

The siblings are aiming to become the fastest to row the 9,000 mile route completely unsupported.

They’ve already managed to row over 6,000 miles but have been hit by storms along the way and been followed by a man-eating hammerhead shark.

Despite that, the Maclean’s told Lorraine, 65, that they still have to take a dip in the ocean.

Lachlan says: “It’s not a leisure swim, but we have to clean the bottom of the boat.

“It’s amazing how quickly you get kind of barnacles and little muscles on the bottom of the hull.

“So we have to jump in and kind of scrape down, because they really slow the boat down.”

And as they near the Australian coast they reveal the sharks will get bigger as they enter waters patrolled by great whites.

Ewan says: “We’ve seen a bunch of sharks already. I think they’re mostly reef sharks which aren’t that big although we actually saw a hammerhead the other day.

I think once we get closer to Australia we will have to be really careful as we will still need to get in the water every five days to clean the hull.

“So I think once we get beyond New Zealand on that final stretch to Australia there will be great whites in those waters.”

But keen fisherman Greg also wanted to know what kind of fish the lads had been catching to eat.

Jamie explained: “For the first half of the journey there were flying fish everywhere.

“They’re like pigeons of the sea. They’re pests. Some of them are quite big, about the size of a mackerel.

“They travel at some speed and the perfect height to take out a rower’s head then just fly on.

“But the little ones end up just throwing themselves on deck. You wake up in the morning, and it looks like there’s been some sort of massacre and they’ve already started to smell.”

However Lorraine wanted to know if the brothers themselves had started to smell as they’re cooped up today night and day on the 30ft vessel called the Rose Emily.

She asked: “Are you all really smelly and horrible? Or can you wash?”

Ewan replied: “Well, I think to each other we smell okay, but the reality would be to anyone on the outside, it’s probably pretty dreadful.

“But we do have to be quite strict. Mainly from a salt perspective as the sea spray corrodes your skin and can quite quickly cause salt sores and blisters.

“So on that basis you either have to rinse it off with fresh water baby wipe before going to bed.”

We revealed last month how Mark Wahlberg, 54, had also had a video call with the Scots brothers saying he wanted to make a movie about their “badass” record bid.

And Greg wanted to know how they had got in touch with the Hollywood A-lister.

Lachlan says: “It was very surreal as we didn’t have any kind of link to him. He reached via one of his people. Apparently he was just taken by the story.

“But we’ve actually spoken to him twice now. He seems quite interested in what’s going on. He’s Just a lovely guy.”

*The Maclean Brothers are attempting to raise £1million for clean water projects. For more information visit themacleanbrothers.com

Woman holding up a sealed food pouch and laughing.
Lorraine Kelly shared a freeze dried meal that the rowers are eating on their voyage.