The invitation which landed on the producer’s desk at the BBC radio show, Steve Wright in the Afternoon, was as intriguing as it was cryptic.
‘The KLF require your presence at a celebratory event to mark the summer solstice. You will be met at a location to be announced and transported to the lost continent of Mu.’
It was the summer of 1991, and the esoteric nature of the summons was typical of the KLF. Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty were the world’s biggest-selling pop group, with a reputation for elaborate, headline-grabbing stunts.
Claire Pattenden, then a personal assistant at the Radio One show, was told to pack for the three-day trip.
The 22 year-old, from a deprived corner of south London, had ‘barely travelled north of Watford’, so wherever ‘Mu’ was, she couldn’t wait to get there.
Claire with husband Andrew Fletcher, the laird of the Ardlussa estate on the Isle of Jura.
Today Claire is sitting in Ardlussa House, a 17th century stalking lodge on a vast estate on the Isle of Jura, recounting how that obscure KLF invitation was to change the course of her life.
How it led Claire to her husband Andrew Fletcher, the laird of the Ardlussa estate; to the motherhood she had yearned for and to founding an award-winning gin distillery on the Hebridean island which captured her heart.
It is a love story which would never have been written, had she not been pulled into the KLF’s outlandish world, more than three decades ago.
The KLF instructed Claire and a select group of international music journalists, to report to Heathrow where they were met by the band’s publicist Scott Piering.
He ushered them on to a flight to Glasgow where they caught a second plane, to the remote Inner Hebridean island of Islay.
The small twin prop headed west, and Claire was mesmerised by the picturesque lacework of sea and land below, as they flew over Arran, the Mull of Kintyre and Gigha before landing at Islay’s windswept dot of an airport.
Claire said: ‘When we landed, I thought we were in Scandinavia or somewhere. I didn’t have a clue where Islay was.’
They were bussed north to Islay’s Port Askaig where they picked up the ferry to Jura – the island the KLF had reimagined as ‘the lost continent of Mu’ – the Babylonian spirit of chaos.
As the little ferry navigated the slither of sea between the neighbouring islands, Claire marvelled at the untamed beauty of Jura ahead; the Paps, a moody trio of scree-clad mountains rose up from an empty, rugged wilderness.
It was a landscape alien to a girl raised in the congested confines of London and yet she felt an instant affinity to the place.
She said: ‘I was amazed by how beautiful it was. I had grown up in an impoverished part of Croydon and I had never seen anything like it. The island felt like the piece of the jigsaw that had been missing for me. It was like magic.’
Claire grew up in an ‘impoverished’ part of Croydon but now lives on a 16,000-acre Hebridean estate
On the slipway to greet the group, were Cauty and Drummond, sat behind a desk and dressed as border guards of their imaginary domain of Mu.
The journalists who had come from as far afield as America and Japan, had their passports stamped with the KLF logo, unaware the defacement rendered them invalid for their return journey.
Claire said: ‘We knew when we saw Bill and Jimmy in full military garb that something very surreal was happening, but we just went with the flow. I was young and naïve, and I was loving it.’
The KLF had hired islanders to accommodate and transport the visitors and at the isolated ferry stop, the designated driver for Claire, was a 19 year-old boy in a beaten-up Toyota Subaru.
He might have been scruffy, but Andrew Fletcher was the son of one of the largest landowners on Jura.
They drove the 25 miles north on the island’s single-track road, to her lodgings and his family home – Ardlussa House.
The grand, white-washed house overlooked the Sound of Jura and sat above its own bleached, sandy bay, where at dusk, otters would forage on the shoreline.
To the north was Corryvreckan, the majestic but treacherous whirlpool where George Orwell almost drowned when his boat capsized, while he was living on the island writing 1984.
Claire had never stayed anywhere so beguiling and remote as Ardlussa House.
The journalists learned they were to perform in a music video.
They were filmed, draped in yellow capes, while Cauty in pagan robes, led them like a Pied Piper across the Paps.
As the troupe traversed boulders and bogs, they belted out Justified and Ancient – the band’s hit single featuring singer Tammy Wynette.
That night, the group were herded to the south of the island and a boathouse at the Ardfin Estate, where three years later the KLF would set ablaze £1 million in their most infamous stunt of all.
The band’s connection to Jura came via Francis Riley-Smith, whose wealthy family established John Smith brewers and owned the Ardfin Estate.
Cauty had known Francis since he was a teenager, and the pair would often helicopter onto the island and run amok in the estate’s imposing house and its large walled garden.
Francis was described in the Press as ‘a ragged public-school exile; one minute jovial, the next violently obnoxious’.
He tended to get so drunken and loud he was often banned from the island’s only pub, which his parents owned.
The KLF had transported an elaborate sound system from Brixton for an all-night rave.
Four ‘maidens’ in yellow robes danced waist high in the sea as a 60ft wicker man was set alight in a ritual burning on the beach.
Claire said: ‘The whole island came, and no-one got to bed. It was just a mad, blur of a party and it was insane.’
And it was against this utterly surreal backdrop, Claire found her soulmate. Claire, 56, smiles at the memory of that carefree chapter.
She said. ‘I fell in love with Jura, almost as much as I fell in love with the boy.’
Back in London, she took to the air on Steve Wright and declared that if the boy from Jura wanted to see her again, he should write.
The message reached Andy and he certainly did want to see her.
‘And that,’ she says, drawing breath, ‘is how I met my husband.’
They married in 1998 at the pretty, white church in Craighouse, the coastal hamlet which houses the island’s only shop, pub and hotel and the majority of its 230 population.
She is aware that some eyebrows were raised among some gentry when a Fletcher, expected to perhaps marry a duchess or IT girl, fell for her instead.
But she said: ‘I have more than earned my stripes. Anyone who had doubts can see that Andy and I are still very much together and very happy.’
It was the trajectory of Claire’s impressive career in radio which initially dictated the couple’s geography.
They were in London where she rose to become Radio One’s head of live music and they then moved to Glasgow and Beat 106, where she became the only female programme controller of a Capital-owned station.
But when Andrew’s father Charles died in 2007, he inherited the family’s 16,000-acre estate and the couple moved their lives to Jura to run it.
They already had three daughters when they took over Ardlussa: Molly, now 21; Scarlet, who is 19, and 17 year-old Kitty Lily Fletcher, whose initials are a tongue-in-cheek tribute to the KLF.
Claire had struggled to get pregnant with the girls and all three were conceived through IVF. But after they moved to Jura, at the age of 40, she fell pregnant naturally, with their fourth child Tabby, now 16.
Ardlussa is a working farm, and the Fletchers are the only full-time resident landowners on Islay and Jura.
The other estates are recreational indulgences for the rich. Ardlussa’s neighbouring 20,000 acres is owned by William Astor, father-in-law to former Prime Minister David Cameron, who holidays there regularly.
Ardfin is now owned by Australian hedge fund millionaire Greg Coffey, who has transformed the estate into an elite, luxury golf course with a hotel which charges £20,000 a night.
Claire found the logistics of raising children on an island challenging, with an eight-hour trip to Islay to reach the nearest supermarket for essentials.
The girls went to the primary school in Craighouse, which had only a dozen pupils, until they were old enough for the high school on Islay.
It was important to the couple that their children were not shipped off to boarding school as Andy had been.
His father Charles had gone to Eton and like Andy, disliked being so far from home.
It was quite a journey to Islay High every day. The girls were picked up at 7am by bus, then ferried to Islay and back and they didn’t get home until after 5pm.
But Claire said: ‘Andy and I both wanted them with us. I had a comprehensive education, and I climbed my way to executive positions in radio.
‘If we didn’t have public school, we would have a meritocracy where everyone was invested in their children’s education.’
And the benefits for the children outweighed any inconvenience.
The have been privileged to roam unfettered, in a playground of empty beaches and translucent sea, moors, and mountains.
They were raised with ponies and dogs and being surrounded by wildlife – deer, seals, ospreys, and golden eagles.
Despite his background, Andy is very grounded and like his father before him, prefers to spend his days with the estate workers and villagers, not with the landed gentry. Like Claire, he works hard.
Although she says being a mum was all she ever wanted, it was tough for Claire to make the transition from a career woman to a laird’s wife.
‘Your job is so much party of your identity and suddenly all that was gone, so I had to reinvent myself,’ she said.
She became an active member of island’s community development board and rejuvenated Ardlussa’s deer stalking, fishing, and guest accommodation.
Her days were spent with the children and cooking and cleaning for guests.
She became friends with the only other mums of small children on the north of the island. Georgina, was an under-employed science teacher and Alicia MacInnes, a financial expert.
Claire said: ‘We loved being mums but there was a real sense of frustration. Our talents were being wasted.’
In 2015 when the HMRC relaxed licensing regulations and opened the door to small gin distilleries, the women found their answer.
They bought a 10 litre, copper still from Amazon for £150 and set up shop in Ardlussa House and so began what has become the thriving business of Lussa Gin.
Georgina, a Cambridge-educated botanist began conjuring up recipes, while Alicia became the money woman and Claire organised the branding and marketing.
They moved the distillery from Claire’s kitchen to an old stable on the estate and the gin is made in small batches using ingredients they can grow or forage from the island’s hills, coastline, wetlands, woods and gardens.
They have an array of prestigious awards and now sell 10,000 bottles a year, from their own shop and website and in exports to Germany and America.
This year they launched a limited edition gin to mark the 75th anniversary of Orwell’s 1984.
Claire said: ‘We never set out to treat this as a hobby, it was always intended to be a serious business.’
They are supportive team and they have a lot of fun, and they laugh ‘a lot, every single day’.
Ambitious as they are, they have turned down requests to supply supermarkets.
‘We only do a four-day week in the business, and we wanted to keep that work life balance,’ said Claire
‘There are still children, ponies, dogs and a farm to care for.’
A tagline on the distillery’s website reads: ‘We are not just gin lovers, we are adventurers.’
And it was quite the adventure which brought Claire to the wilderness she made home.
