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1. Emma:
My names emma wyne, ive been on the river since 1998, I started as a boat hand working for
frauca at tyrells, as a boat hand and as a student I was in a shared house on mill road and I
lived with some people who ran boats from kings parade in the summer time as a part time –
extra money type job and one of the chaps that I lived with, Alex ramsey , taught me how to
punt and we used to go down and see him at lunchtimes and sit by the river etc.
In 1998 at the end of that year I met for my ex partner. He was working for his parents in st ives
in engineering and he himself was bored stiff with his job and wanted to do something else and I
suggested we did a punt up, we found a punt in someone’s garden in Hemingford and they said
we could have it. So we salvaged this old wrecked single punt and started to put it together and
it literally was putting it together, it was rotten and it was awful. So we put this punt together and
started working on this punt from kings bridge that summer. That boat was clipped by someone
on a very wet night and it was chucking down rain and the river was running very quick and we
believe it was scuds who did it. That was our belief at the time, that jams mcnotan actually
clipped it. It disappeared, it did resurface months and months later and it was found. By which
stage wed claimed on our insurance, and with the money we claimed we purchased two old st
johns boats, which are still on the river actually. One called the duke and the duchess. Johns
boats are slightly bigger, can take up to 8 passengers, slightly bigger and wider at the front. So
we moved from there, we started working down at Jesus green. It wasn’t until after nick
maseychick had been sacked from scuds. He sent one season on jesus green working and he
had this henchman with him who sat there all day protecting them. Unlike what it is now, it was
a lot more dangerous in the sense that the police didn’t care, the council didn’t care, so scuds
were quite heavy handed and so were the other punt companies – extremely heavy hand and
they took the law into their own hands and dish out what ever they deemed fit. We’d find electric
eals in our punts, punts sunk, locked up in the middle of the day by scuds, frangrantly put that in
our faces, it was rather bizarre. Unlike now where its all very this century, back then it still had
the splatters of the 70s and 80s about it. Look at what happened with jimmy savile. People look
back now and are like “oh my goodness” and you listen to his PA and she was like “oh but it
was the sixties and things were different then” and its a little bit like that. Now that would never
be going on, you look at whats going on in the middle and people are just doing what ever they
please.
Aaron:
“Would it be fair to say that scudamores is very different to what it was and has come a long
way especially in the public eye”
Emma:
They are more proffesional, they get on with their own business, theyre not interested in killing
their competition with brute force, they’re more interested in building their own business
Aaron

2. Would you agree that scuds dominate the tourism and the industry on the river or they still need
to fight to keep their place on the river
Emma:
I think scudamores are the leader in the market place, on quayside they dont dominate, they
take 50% of the market place there. In the mill pond they do dominate.
Aaron:
How much of the business would you say the independent operators take.
Emma:
I would say scudamores take 50% of the business.
Aaron:
You’ve been on the river since 98 - how would you say punting has evolved in cambridge as in
industry and as a tourist attraction in those 18 years.
Emma:
It has evovled, it could hopefully get better. I look back to when i started and it was a very
closed scenario with all the companies, there were no independent operators. At that point in
time, people would put doubles and triples together and punt them down the river, there were
less boats on the river, there were less tourists, there were less people in cambridge so the river
was a lot less busy. Has it got better? I wouldnt have thought so, from the user aspect of the
river its probably got a lot worse. If i was a local on the saturday, you probably wouldn’t. Its not
the river it used to be.
Aaron:
Do you think touts are nuisance in cambridge? Do you think they are something that make
cambridge, or a necessity?
Emma:
I think touts are a nuisance in cambridge. It really depends on the way a tout approaches
somebody, whether or not they are just blanket touting or whether they are taking an intellectual
choice on who they are gonna ask to go punting. You've seen an influx of many more touts and
it's been ongoing over the last 15 years or so and everyone on the river has had hell to pay with
it.
Aaron:
With the recent introduction of the laws against touting in certain parts of cambridge how much
do you think its going to change the industry of punting in cambridge.
Emma:
What we've seen from that so far is that it hasn't actually made much of an impact on stopping
those people touting, as they put it in the paper they are just adjusting to this new way of selling,

3. so they are not allowed to say boat or punting or gondola or river. So they are just saying to
people would you like to do this and pointing to a picture and the people say do you mean
punting and they are saying if anyone is listening “something like that but maybe not” and when
the person has disappeared they are saying “yes yes yes it is punting and book on”. It's only
recently that they've got a whole new banner and they've got this coop with the newsagents on
kings parade saying buy your punting tickets here. I don't think they've got inclination to stop.
Aaron:
So would you say this new law which has been in effect for at least one month now has had no
difference on the business that the unlicenced operators gain?
Emma:
I don’t know whether i could answer that question clearly because i'm not involved in their
business so i don't know exactly how it may or may not have affected them. But from our point
of view it doesn’t seem like it has affected them, it may have affected them on certain days,
possibly. But overall they seem to be adjusting quite well to this new law and continuing touting
on the street. So we’ll see whether it has an effect next summer.
Aaron:
So would you say, as a licensed operator yourself, that you've seen no difference or increase in
the amount of business you’re gaining since the law was introduced.
Emma:
No, I would say there's been no gain for the other punting businesses, as such, not that anyone
in the public would be interested in that. But it would be nice for cambridge as a whole to not be
asked to go punting whilst they’re shopping
Aaron:
What do you think of the unofficial ask system on quayside
Emma:
Its great, quayside used to be quite a feisty place, a difficult place for people to work. Full of
tension, it's a sales industry so there's always going to be that tension between people but on
quayside now, at the top, where people come down the street on bridgestreet there two people
only allowed to stand there, one from the independents and one from scudamore's. And they
take turns so it's very very relaxed and a lot less squabbles go on.
Aaron:
Has the ask system had a positive impact on the sales you get or has it decreased
Emma:
It's exactly the same, the same as people squabbling or not. I think the way that the cards are
dealt on a day within those sales are delivered exactly in the same manner, its just the manner

4. they are collected is different, i think alot of people who work there have realised that which is
positive.
Aaron:
Has ticket respect had a beneficial impact on sales on quayside
Emma:
I’d say it benefits everybody, the customer and the sales people, if a customer's been given a
ticket, its a given that that customer then wont be touched by other salespeople. The customer
is less harassed, if they want to book on, they are free to book on and if they want to talk to
other companies or sales representitives and they are shopping around as such, they are free to
also do that. I think it has got a benefit for everybody involved.
Aaron:
Have the unlicensed punters had a positive impact on the industry as a whole or have they
damaged the industry
Emma:
If you were to interview them, they would say the later, they would say they’ve increased
punting, raised its profile. Having been on the river for the time i have i would say the opposite, i
would say they have brought the tone of the industry into the gutter, just in the way they dress
and behave. Its not a great look, alot of the people who are working on the river in the middle
would probably struggle to get a job in tescos.
Aaron:
Some people have been known to say the middle are the riff raff of cambridge in tracksuits,
would you agree to this
Emma:
I quite like that, its a fun way to put it i suppose
Aaron:
If they unlicensed punt operators were suddenly removed from cambridge, do you think punting
would survive? Would it get better? Or would it decrease?
Emma:
I think punting would bounce back and would have its own reputation brought back up again. It's
quite hard for the whole industry because you’ve got a lot of people who love their job, love
punting and feel everything has been falling apart and really feel ashamed by the industry and
what it represents and how people see it nowadays and how the local people really look down
on punters and it's not a great thing. They’ll be a bit of a healing process after that and i think
everyone can go forward and look at their health and safety and look at making the industry
better for the customer and make it enjoyable again.

5. Aaron:
Do you think the river has been made safer by new self hire rules, or do you think its made no
difference to the self hire punters because of their lack of ability in the first place
Emma:
I don't think age would have much to do with it, i can understand that aspect of introducing an
age ban, but you probably want to introduce an age ban at the other end as well, it's a bit like
driving a car, somebody hits a certain age - maybe they should be retested. We do see an awful
lot of older people who do do self hire, as and when they do fall in the river you do worry for
them having a heart attack from the shock of the cold of the water, unable to swim or get
themselves back up into the boat because they haven't got the strength to pull themselves back
up into the boat once their clothes are drenched in water. We’ve seen that every now and again.
So i suppose they’re touching on the younger people because that's an easier target to focus
on. The main crux of self hire is the number of boats that every company is allowed to have for
self hire.
Aaron:
A small percentage of the self hire population have a very good punting ability. Do you think the
companies should a small driving test, per say, for a self hire to be allowed to be taken out.
Emma:
Absolutely, that would be be very labour intensive for them to do that and it's not something that
is culturally there at all. You see people go out on self hires, they are handed a pole and the
boats kicked out and it's off you go. It would be helpful but obviously it wouldn't be helpful for the
businesses who are running the self hire boats to have to do that every time they sent out a self
hire.
Aaron:
Touching on the number of boats, some people say that self hires are the problem, other
people, especially members of the public, would say its actually the chauffeurs who are taking
up most of the river, do you think theres too many chauffered boats on the rive and do you think
there needs to be a cap on that?
Emma:
Possibly, when you look at the number of chauffeured boats for any business whos running
boats, there is only a need for a certain amount of boats because once a boat goes out it will
eventually come back, so you can only really run a number of boats, once you start having
those extra boats it becomes a waste of time because youve got to pay for those boats to have
them on the river and theres only a maximum amount of boats you would need as a company
but i certainly think the whole river the cam conservancy need to look at a number of boats for
the entirety of the river, whether its self hire or for chauffeured boats and i think this argument
boils down to the fact that there are just too many boats on the river
Aaron:

6. If you have a boat on the river you need to pay for a license fee. The independent operators are
given a life time license. Do you think there should be expiry date before you have to reapply for
the license? To give other people a chance to get into the business?
Emma:
There were licences that were given out in 2008 and a whole process happened, of application,
at that point in time and so there were people who were given licences at that point who didnt
take them up and there were people who opted not to go through the process and work at garret
hostel lane and to answer your question whether or not more people should be given that
opportunity, there just isnt the space on the river to do that, to offer more spaces for spaces for
people in the river, wouldn’t make sense.