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"Initially, taking over was as exciting as scoring for Scotland in the last minute against England," he says. and how there was any whisky left when they got there." In 1977, he was moved to Glasgow where he spent seven years as a blender, before returning to take over as manager at Bowmore in 1984. everyone was flying, there were casks swinging back and forward, missing the boat, missing the lorry. "You'd be in the hold with two hoggies swinging above your head and the man on the winch not knowing what day it was! By 11 a.m. He was a hard taskmaster who coopered in the old way, doing everything by hand – just in case the power went off and you couldn't make your wages!"He stepped into Davey's shoes as warehouse manager in 1969 and ran the cellars until 1977, a time when the puffers were still on the go. "I learned a lot of things about life from him. "He wasn't just a great cooper who taught me everything he knew but a great philosopher," Jim recalls. He worked under the legendary Davey Bell, Scotland's longest-serving cooper and Davey's attitude to life has stayed with him. That's Jim McEwan for you.These days he's Morrison Bowmore's International Brand Ambassador and International Spirits Challenge Distiller of the Year, but that was hardly the career path he had mapped out for himself when he started as an Apprentice Cooper at the distillery in 1963. Most managers are like that, but not many tell you about some part of the process and then ask you a question soon after to see if you have been paying attention. It all descended into whisky-fuelled madness, par for the course – this was Islay after all.The one thing that stuck in my mind (other than the banana) was Bowmore's Distillery Manager, a man with a fund of outrageous stories and an infectious passion for his subject. It was fun, until the entertainment was curtailed when the chairman tried to water-ski and blew up the engine of the boat. After a few drams, the option of being towed around the loch on the back of an inflatable banana was agreed to be a better strategy. There was an altogether weird malt whisky seminar at Bowmore in which retailers, writers and producers attempted to thrash out a workable plan for communicating about whisky. It all began in 1990 on the back of a banana.