Port St Mary RNLI helm Richard Leigh talks to Rebecca Bradhe after winning the Lifetime Achievement award at the 2023 Media Isle of Man Awards for Excellence.
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00:00 Okay, so Richard Lee here has just won Lifetime Achievement. How are you feeling?
00:05 Surprised to be honest. I wasn't expecting it in the slightest.
00:09 Did you, you didn't even know you got nominated?
00:12 No, I had no idea at all. No idea. So no clue whatsoever. I just assumed this was something to do with lifeboats.
00:19 Raising money and so that was what we were part of so I'm glad I put my jacket on then.
00:25 And what was it that made you join the RNLI and the lifeboat service to start with?
00:30 It was, I think it was touched on in the film, it was just watching the boat go out when I was a child.
00:35 So when I was literally stood there in my wellies and my pyjamas and watching the boat go out.
00:40 So it was, yeah, it was something I always wanted to do when I moved back to the island
00:46 which I did in '97. So 25 years I've been doing it now. So yeah, love every minute of it.
00:52 And do you have any highlights from your time?
00:57 There's highlights and there's also lows as well. I think that's part and parcel of it.
01:02 So there's good bits and then there's some bits that are very sad. But yeah, so it's a mixture.
01:12 And can you talk a bit about the, I guess incident that you got a bronze medal for earlier this year?
01:20 So the bronze medal, it was awarded to myself. But I think the important thing is to get over that
01:27 there is a crew behind me. It's not just me. It says on our shirts, lifeboat crew. I am lifeboat crew
01:33 just because I happened to be helming the boat that day. It could have been any, you know, a number of us on the crew.
01:39 It was, I don't know, I sort of look back on it now and I don't think it was, I've been out in sort of
01:46 what I would consider possibly trickier situations. But I think the powers that be had decided that
01:53 they were going to award me a bronze medal, which I am very, very proud of.
01:58 Amazing. Well that's all my questions. Is there anything else that you want to say?
02:03 No, not really. I just, I mean, I touched on it on the top there. It is a massive organisation that's run purely by charitable donations.
02:13 And it's just phenomenal what everybody does to contribute to it.
02:18 Thank you.
02:20 [No audio]