A pulse-raising account of a two-week shift on a North Sea oil rig in 1980, where men got paid serious money to do the lethal work behind a deadly business
For three years in the late 70s and early 80s, Jonathan Lichtenstein worked on the drilling deck of an oil rig in the North Sea. The risk of injury or death was immense - but so was the money. Like many others, he signed up to clear his debts and escape manual work for a better life.
In Rig 83 he gives an intensely vivid account of the work, the fear, the camaraderie and violence contained on the rig, a place where none of the usual norms and hierarchies applied, and where all that mattered was whether you - and your co-workers - stayed focussed enough to stay alive.
Following a single two-week shift on the rig, his memoir provides a close encounter with the people - hard-working, precarious, disposable - and a fearsome reckoning with the work - filthy, dark and toxic - that made Britain rich and on which every facet of our modern lives has since come to rely.