TAXI driver Warrington (Soup) Zuill was out driving in the midst of last Friday's hurricane - to enable the world to see what was happening to Bermuda.

Mr. Zuill accepted the job of ferrying around a visiting television crew from CNN as winds of more than 100 miles per hour whipped across the island.

As a result, live pictures of a reporter standing on the South Shore as Fabian's wrath was unleashed on Bermuda were beamed around the world.

Mr. Zuill, 72, who has been driving taxis on the island for 52 years, said he had no worries about the consequences when he took the crew out early last Friday morning.

"I knew it was going to be adventurous, but I'm an adventurous person," he said.

It turned into an adventure as Mr. Zuill held the stand under cameraman Jonathan Schaer's camera to help steady it in the ferocious winds.

And the journey back to the crew's hotel became a two-hour ordeal as they attempted to clear tree branches from the roads as the hurricane raged around them.

The CNN crew - including Mr. Schaer, reporter Gary Tuchman and producer Michael Heard - asked Mr. Zuill to take them to a good place to broadcast on the storm.

He took them to Horseshoe Bay but, because of the area's topography, they were unable to beam a signal to their satellite from there.

"We ended up going to the Reefs and on the way in, we met the owner, David Dodwell," Mr. Zuill said.

"David gave us permission to use the facilities. We set up on a terrace up there and we could not have asked for a better location. They were broadcasting from about 9 a.m. to 3.30 p.m."

The crew were staying at the Harmony Club in Paget, normally a ten-minute drive away from the Reefs, but this was not a normal day.

"The journey took us one hour and 50 minutes. We diverted onto a lot of different roads. We had to get out and cut trees and pull trees around.

"These things I thought I would only ever see in a movie - being out in a hurricane and trying to get back home.

"At one point I was trying to break a tree branch and I slipped over onto my butt. The crew were shooting while I was trying to get up in the middle of Hurricane Fabian. It was a joke for the whole crew to see Soup on his butt in the road. It was not a nice feeling to think that CNN were shooting me then!"

When they got back to the Harmony Club, they found their rooms damaged and flooded and so they had to continue their traumatic journey to Elbow Beach.

Mr. Zuill said the crew - who the week before had been working in Iraq - had been friendly and humorous. And working in such trying conditions had been par for the course for them.

"The cameraman, Jon, told me that this hurricane was a piece of cake to them and they were used to seeing storms that blew around boats and cars and uprooted people's houses," said Mr. Zuill.

"It was a big storm but it was no comparison to what they had seen globally. But Jon praised the construction of Bermuda houses with Bermuda limestone and said it could have been a lot worse if the houses weren't so strong."

Mr. Zuill stayed with the crew and continued to transport them around the island for the next three days.

"My family was very co-operative, knowing that I would be back in the next few days and they kept in contact with me throughout," he said.