Spiders the size of a CD case presented Aberdeen journalist Jenny Clarke with a nightmare assignment.

Jenny and photographer Jim Irvine knew they were in for some good material when they visited collector Brian Burnett. There was just one drawback: Jenny is terrified of even the tiniest spider.

So when Brian handed her a sweet box containing his biggest specimen, Tarka, a bird-eating tarantula weighing 120 grams, she needed every ounce of control not to drop it and run.

“It was just huge and its legs were so hairy and its little eyes were looking everywhere. I was really chuffed with myself for not freaking out,” she said.

The 26-year-old reporter and features writer with the Evening Express decided to face her fear head-on after hearing of Brian’s bid to get Tarka listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s heaviest spider.

She already checked that the creatures were kept in cages before setting out for the flat that Brian shares with 10 tarantulas, a scorpion, a cat and a praying mantis. But even when she reached the door, Jenny was not sure that she could bring herself to go in.

Her anxiety rose as she spotted what appeared to be five large spiders crawling up the wall – only to be told they were skins that Brian had had mounted.

More than an hour later, the Express duo had enough material for a hair-raising piece that took out most of a page.p>But Jenny admits it was one of the worst jobs she’d tackled and did nothing to quell her fear

“It was horrendous,” she said. “I’m terrified of spiders and have been since I was a little kiddie. If there’s a tiny spider in my room and there’s no-one around to get rid of it, I will sleep in a different room. I could appreciate the beauty of them and the wonderful colours – but if they hadn’t been in cages, I wouldn’t have been there.”

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