Among the shellfish something gleamed .... and brought us the skills of Craftsmen 3,200 years ago. It was just another day on board the Favour, and just another catch of scallops being hauled aboard the wind-battered fishing boat. But something was glittering among the day's catch ... something metallic and gold coloured. Fisherman Kenny Cunningham looked at it quizzically for a moment. He thought he'd dragged up a bit of brass bedstead from the treacherous Hebridean waters of the Minch. Then he tossed into his toolbox beside some old spanners.

It was more than a year later that Kenny discovered his piece of junk was, in fact, one of the most exciting archaeological finds ever made in Scotland. Languishing unrecognised on his boat was a 3,200-year-old necklet, fashioned out of incredibly pure gold by a craftsman in the Bronze Age.

For Scotland, it is unique, a complete one-off. Old records tell us that three other torcs, as they are called, have been found in Scotland but not one has survived. Copies were made of two, but all three originals were lost or perhaps melted down. Anyhow, they've vanished forever.

And that could easily have been the fate of the torc Kenny Cunningham found, two miles of the Shiant Islands. But by chance, the 38-year-old fisherman switched on the television one night in his Scalpay home, and found himself watching The Antiques Roadshow.

Kenny recalled: "They were doing an item about torcs, and I thought 'that looks like the thing I've got in the tool box'. I wasn't certain it was still there and thought I ight have chucked it over the side. So I rushed to the boat - and there it was".