The Old Man rises out of the North Atlantic: a 450-foot pillar of vertical sandstone, an outpost of the great cliffs of the Island of Hoy, the highest sea cliffs in Great Britain. A year ago Tom Patey, a doctor in the Western Highlands and one of Scotland's most famous mountaineers, suggested that the BBC should televise a climb of this apparently unscalable peak. Christopher Brasher sends a report from Hoy on how this apparently impossible suggestion is taking shape, and on the preparation for this weekend's outside broadcasts from Hoy.