Local hero - John Smeaton interview

JOHN Smeaton is wearing green thigh-length waders, a green fishing jacket and wielding a 14ft fly fishing rod, manufactured by Sharps of Aberdeen, which has been fitted with a "purple shrimp" fly. The bill of his baseball cap shields him from the glare of the sun. It was a gift from the New York Fire Department and says: "FD 911 NY". On the sides are the words: "Honoring all first responders."

The River Tummel, on this warm Thursday morning, is relatively fast flowing, the water breaking white over submerged rocks and boulders, and the air is sweet-smelling, perfumed by the faint whiff of tobacco from the ghillie's cigarette. Every minute or so, Smeaton raises the rod back with both hands, flicks his wrists, which spins the rod top and sends the fine white line wriggling then looping into a "snake roll" cast, which ends with the fly dropping down near a distant rock by the opposite bank, from which it is carried with the current into the shallows where, so we are told, the salmon lie.

"Now this," says Smeaton, taking off his baseball cap to mop his brow "is an office in which I could get used to working."

To the citizens of Scotland and a growing chunk of Americans, the fly-fisherman is "Smeato", the baggage handler turned hero who, during the attempted bombing of Glasgow Airport, the first anniversary of which falls on Monday, fought back against one of the alleged bombers, helped drag an injured colleague to safety, then epitomised the spirit of Scotland by issuing a warning to al-Qaeda, through repeated interviews on the BBC, CNN and NBC, not to target his nation or "we'll set aboot ye". The internet site dedicated to his courage and urban eloquence quickly attracted hundreds of thousands of hits and the media, always anxious to view a sprawling event through the prism of a single person, anointed him the hero of the hour. Since then, thanks in part to the canny idea of his new manager, media guide and friend, Peter Rosengard, to take him to New York for the anniversary of 11 September, John Smeaton has become a genuine celebrity.

In the immediate aftermath of the attack and as the media storm began to swirl around him, Smeaton did what he always does when troubled or confused: he retired with his rods to a favourite stretch of still water and revived his sagging spirit through hours in silent contemplation with nature and the capture of a few "brownies". An avid fisherman since the age of 11, he's a member of two fishing clubs, Rowbank Angling and Milngavie Angling Club, and can be found a few times each week casting a line at trout fisheries at Lawfield at Kilmacolm and the Maich at Lochwinnoch. Yet in all his years spent on the line, the king of fish, the salmon, has eluded his fly.

We arrange to meet at 6:30am, outside Greggs on the corner of George Square in Glasgow, for the drive to Kinnaird Estate in Perthshire for a morning's fly-fishing. At 6:45am, Smeaton pulls up in a blue Ford Focus. He's wearing a New York Yankees sweatshirt, his baseball cap, jeans and hiking books. He sweeps papers and cigarette packets off the front passenger seat, apologises for the mess and we set off.

John Smeaton is a remarkable man. He has the ability to smoke a cigarette, fiddle with the TomTom sat-nav, rummage for the next packet of Marlboro Lights, discuss Michael Bloomberg, the Mayor of New York, and the multi-billionaire's preference for the great rivers of Colorado for fly fishing and drive through Glasgow's early morning traffic without once slamming us into the tail of the car in front. A last- second flick of the steering wheel always keeps us in lane and out of a pile-up.

On the motorway, as the speedometer starts to climb, the car begins to echo with the chimes of Big Ben. "My dad's been fiddling with this thing again" he says of the warning noises emanating from the sat-nav. "We share the car." Smeaton has been living at home with his parents in Erskine ever since splitting up with his girlfriend, with whom he shared a flat, a few weeks prior to The Incident. Though he has his own room, where he retires to play his Xbox – "Halo rules, it's just f***ing brilliant" – he'd like his own place. "People might be envious of me, they see all the attention I get, but I tell you, I'm envious of them. They'll have their own home, or flat; I'd love that."

As we drive, he explains that he's looking for a change. After working at Glasgow Airport for 13 years, he was offered a new job six months ago, working security at a city-centre car park, but with the understanding that he'd be an ambassador for the company. However, it's not quite worked out. He's bored, depressed. Last night, while fishing out at Lawfield Trout Fishery, he decided to chuck it. "I'd like to get into fish farming or something to do with history. I love history." He recently played William Wallace in an interactive tourist attraction at the Edinburgh Dungeon attraction.

It's clear that Smeaton occupies a curious celebrity limbo. His fame has failed to translate into an adequate living. His novelty single, a cover of Britney Spears' Hit Me Baby One More Time, recorded with the then Miss Scotland Nieve Jennings, was never released. "It just wasn't for me," he explains. "It didn't seem right."

Every time he goes into Glasgow or Edinburgh, he is stopped by people wanting their photograph taken with him, a request to which he always agrees. Even in the queue at KFC – "I love the large bucket, I could tan one myself" – he is often called over by a father wanting a picture with his family. "Kids seem to love me," he says in a tone stripped of ego, but packed with incredulity. He is a life-long Rangers fan (a team pennant hangs from the car mirror) but when he attended the Uefa cup final in Manchester, he was forced to go back to the hotel after posing for over 100 pictures as he made his way through the crowds of fans. "Even in the hotel bar people were still asking and for the first time ever I had to say: 'No, I'm just trying to have a quiet drink.' " He says that since the spotlight has illuminated his life, he's had to be more careful. "People try and set you up, provoke you while their mates film it on a camera-phone. It's mad."

Each weekend and a few nights during the week, he's out attending a charity do or a corporate event. When I ask his fee, he says it's "alright". When I ask if it's 1,000, he says, he wishes. He is regularly invited to schools to give talks on terrorism. "I always tell them that not all Muslims share terrorist views, that it's like thinking the BNP speak for everyone in Britain. I also tell them it's what happens when people stop talking and don't compromise."

He was even invited to Leeds for the opening of the John Smeaton Community Hall.

"You're joking? They've named a hall after you? In Leeds?"

"No. Not me. The other guy – the engineer."

He talks me through next week's schedule. There is the Anthony Nolan Trust Ball in Edinburgh, he's then opening the local Bishopton Garden Fete and doing a charity walk for cystic fibrosis. Then there is his role as a member of the judging panel at Seventh Heaven, a pole-dancing club in Glasgow where he is billed as "Our Airport Hero".

"Don't mention that, my girlfriend will go mad. She gave me a hard enough time when I was at Miss Scotland." He adopts an American accent: " 'All those girls will be throwing themselves at you.' Hardly."

One of the benefits of the past year was meeting Christy Macphedran, a 31-year-old medical auditor from the Bronx. They met when Smeaton visited New York on the anniversary of the attacks of 11 September, an e-mail friendship developed and when he asked her to be his date at CNN's ordinary heroes event, she accepted. "She's a great girl," he explains, changing gears. On the first anniversary of the attack he will be back at Glasgow Airport to catch a flight to Newark for a month-long holiday in the States. After two weeks in New York, he and Macphedran are heading west to Los Angeles, before taking the Pacific Coast Highway up to San Francisco. "I can't wait – it's going to be brilliant."

My directions, however, are not and 15 minutes before we are due to wet our lines, a farmer is explaining to me that we are at the wrong Kinnaird. The right Kinnaird is another hour away by his reckoning, but Smeaton takes the screw-up in good spirits. "Not a problem, not a problem," he says, while simultaneously punching the correct postcode into the sat-nav, and steering us on to the right road.

Forty minutes later we are in Kinnaird Estate's snug, wooden fishing bothy, peering up at the oil painting of the 40lb salmon caught by Lady Ward on 3 October, 1932 and listening as Martin Edgar, our good-natured ghillie, talks us through our morning on the upper beat. Soon Smeaton and Edgar's encyclopaedic knowledge of fish and lines and flies is filling the air as they bat over and return suggestions and recommendations like competitors in a friendly tennis match. My knowledge is minimal, my skills below basic and during our few hours on the rocky banks I lose five flies: two Green Highlanders, a Stoat's Tail, a Red Ally and a Monro Killer, a new course record. A few hundred yards down river, I can see Smeaton's line illuminated in the sunlight as it coils out across the river but the king of fish has no intention of being yanked from his watery kingdom.

"Nothing," he says when I waddle over in waders to check his progress. Yet just as he reels in for the final time, he spots a salmon a few feet off and his curse fills the air. An hour later, while posing on the estate's row boat for Donald, the photographer, he cries out: "You sneaky wee bastard." Once again a salmon has peeked up to mock his foe before flicking him the tail and swimming off.

On the drive home, Smeaton's mobile rings. He takes the call. It's the News of the World wanting a comment on what he believes would be an appropriate statue or symbol to stand on the Scottish border. Like a politician loaded with ready-prepared sound-bites, he offers a prompt reply. "It should really be a statue of a lone piper. It's got to be Scottish and something that people can recognise and relate to." He then goes on to deliver an eloquent, moving explanation on the perception the statue would evoke. To people arriving it would be a happy tune of welcome and when they leave it would symbolise a lament at their departure.

The same could be said for spending time in John Smeaton's company. When he finally drops me back in Glasgow, before heading home to Erskine where his Xbox awaits, I find myself wishing him well. After a year as Scotland's hero he deserves a holiday and a job that leads somewhere. "I'm just going to see where the current will take me," he says. And perhaps, along the way, hook a salmon.