Meeting your heroes is never a good idea.

I've blogged here about never meeting my ultimate hero; Jacques Cousteau perhaps that is why he has, for me, retained much of the mystique that is central to hero worship.

I have however been lucky enough to meet a few of my heroes and in some cases unfortunate enough to meet others.

By the time I got to meet David Bellamy (above) he had largely discredited himself as a scientist and had become the character he created. As we chatted over dinner the remaining vestiges of respect evaporated in a cloud of pompous nonsense.     

My mild obsession with David Bellamy OBE was instigated by my father, mostly as he was desperate to replace Jacques Cousteau in the hope that I would stop talking in a silly French accent. Given my penchant for imitating my heroes this was probably not as clever a move as he thought it was. I can still do a pretty good Bellamy impression.

When I was a kid Bellamy was pretty big, a serious botanist loads of publications and a string of successful television programmes behind him. He'd even done a superb underwater series looking at the native flora and fauna of the British Isles. I think it was this series that my father thought could be used to wean me off Cousteau.

My adulation for Bellamy took a bit of a tarnishing after he went and did this.



I'm all for promoting science education amongst kids and was a science teacher myself for a number of years but there's just no call for this sort of thing. David Bellamy had quickly become a caricature of himself and increasingly he became the bumbling, air groping, hairball character he created. I still think that his impression of Bellamy was the best and funniest thing that Lenny Henry ever did and quite possibly the only funny thing he did.

My positive childhood memories of David Bellamy probably have lingered on in my subconscious; what other explanation could there possibly be for the picture underneath!!!

lets never speak of this again!

Having fallen out of fashion Bellamy disappeared off our television screens years hence although in recent times has sought and gained notoriety as the, in my opinion badly chosen, face of the climate change sceptics, touting pseudo-science and fraudulent claims to anyone who'll listen. These days he's known for his bad hair, bad singing and bad science.



Now people who know me well, and those of you who have seen the picture of me above, will realise that I, more than most, need to be able to forgive bad hair and bad singing, which I think I can do but forgive bad science; Never, never, never.

A good slap

There's a couple of great Ulster Scots words that I want to share with you, they are;
'thaveless' which describes being no good at practical things especially working with your hands.
and 'skelp' to roughly strike someone especially a naughty child.

You can probably tell where this is going?

When I was a kid I was known for being thaveless, as in "gimme thon ya thaveless edjot, I'll dae it masel' And then when I was 11 years old, all of that changed, when I made an iron poker in metal-work class at school.

You should have seen it, it was a beauty. I recall the immense sense of pride I had, looking at the finished article. No more the thaveless edjot I was practically an ironmonger.

It was a thin straight metal rod with a twist at the top, the handle made of a stack of glued together red, white and blue Perspex discs that I'd shaped on a lathe. It was a really well made, good-looking, poker.

I gave it lovingly it to my Grandmother for her birthday. The irony is not lost on me that less than six months later, Granny would be beating the legs off me with that same poker. (yeah that's right I grew up in an era where you could beat a kid with an iron rod and no one thought anything of it)

My Grandmother: Margaret Carlisle nee Spence

My Grandmother was what could best be described as a strict disciplinarian. She belonged very much to those generations before modern childrearing practices who firmly believed that children should be seen and not heard. For her, like everyone of that era, love came in one flavour only; tough.

I'd been farmed out for the summer holidays and having drawn the short straw was to spend six weeks with Granny Carlisle. Her house was practically a museum, all leather and linoleum, it smelt of liver and dust and sounded of the slow tic-toc of long clocks. Nothing was to be touched, everything was an heirloom and my every move was under constant surveillance.

Granny's parlour was out of bounds to all but a few

I'd managed on one rare occasion to give her the slip and slid unnoticed into the parlour, the one room I was strictly prohibited from. Telling a very inquisitive 11 year old that he can't go somewhere is a sure fire way to ensure that's the one place he ends up. So what happened next is really all Granny's fault.

She had one of those spinning globes, which at the time, seemed to be as big as the world itself, now however looking at the picture I can see it was a modest affair. What's the point of having a spinning globe if you can't give it a spin, so that's what I did. I spun it fast enough to turn the world into a blur of green and blue and I recall it making a very satisfying rickety hum that was begging to be accompanied on the piano. Timorously I tapped out a high note "tink" and more bravely another "tink, tink" before forgetting where I was and launching into a full blown keyboard bash all low notes and ominous.

It was as if the notes, that were still reverberating around the room, had heralded the appearance of an evil witch in some bad movie. There was Granny, glaring gruesomely at me from the doorway. "ya dirty wee heathen"; heathen being the worst swear word that Granny knew. "I'll skelp the legs aff ye"

After a bit of a Benny Hill style chase I was roughly caught, wigged about a bit and then as if by magic the poker, my poker, appeared in her hand and I received three or four good skelps around the back of the legs that would hurt for a week.

As I limped from the parlour the dying notes from the piano were still ringing in my ears along with the slowing rickety hum of the globe.

Ultimate Heroes, bobble hats and aqualungs

Literally I'd be bouncing on the sofa in excited anticipation. The living room  abandoned, as it usually was, by my siblings who were only too aware of what was about to happen. With bright red bobble hat jauntily atop my head I'd wait alone for the adventure to begin.

The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau was my childhood obsession. From age 7 till about 13 I don't think there was a single photo of me taken that didn't include a turtleneck jumper, rolled up jeans, bobble hat and deck shoes. My mother recently and painfully reminded me that I also spent most of that time talking in "a put on" French accent.

Mother is snail mailing a picture of me complete with bobble hat until then you'll have to make do with the real thing. 

Perhaps it was the exotic French accent or the otherworldliness of the undersea, perhaps it was the weird sounding names and places; Calypso, French Polynesia, the Coral Sea but to a 7 year old boy from bog standard Cullybackey it was like looking through a porthole to another world. A technicolor half hour in a black and white life.

My model of Cousteau's ship the Calypso was perhaps my parents all time greatest christmas present. I say perhaps as a proper microscope was right up there and I also live in hope that mothers knitted jumpers will cease and I'll see a return to form.   

Cousteau is my ultimate Hero, long before Attenborough he was making scientific discovery popular and accessible. His contribution to science is immense his contribution to humanity immeasurable. So many of my interests and passions can be traced back to those happy half hours in the undersea world of my parents sofa. I never would have studied science if it weren't for Captain Cousteau, my wanderlust is attributed to him as is my curiosity will all things foreign and exotic. I joined Greenpeace as a direct result of watching his documentaries, went on the first ever whale walk, got arrested for animal rights activism and now that I think of it he's probably the reason why I've never lived more than a mile from the sea in the last 27 years.

TV doesn't get any more adventurous than this  

I never got to meet Jacques Cousteau, he died in 1997 but I have been a member of the Cousteau Society for the Protection of Ocean Life since I was 10 and heartily recommend it to anyone. Jacques lead a life full of passion and scientific curiosity and left a legacy of discovery and hope this is why Jaques Cousteau is my ultimate hero. Who is yours?



Lesser childhood heroes to follow.

Give a kid a book

Having long ago run out of book shelf space I now have several stacks of books piled about my Kemp Town flat and I am fast running out of floor space. What started as pondering on where the latest additions to my burgeoning collection could possibly go, ended upon recollection of my first ever book.

My mother assures me that the book in question was a red, leather bound, revised standard version of the bible given to me as a gift from a great aunt who was known more for her spirit than her spirituality. A quick check and wouldn't you know it I still have that bible in my possession and I have to say for something that I've had for forty years it looks remarkably unread. 

My mothers memory alas is filled with unrealised hope and promise for the first book I can recall as being mine was not the bible but a large, green, canvas backed, hardback, encyclopaedia of animals given to me by my father. It was to be the beginning of a life long love affair with science. 


I devoured the book, memorised it, quoted from it with annoying frequency and to this day know more about the habitat, distribution and breeding habits of everything from the Kakapo to the Ocelot than I do about almost anything else including the bible. 

So how come that great green font of knowledge is gone and the red leather bible remains? Well I guess I like the smell of leather and that particular story is told and unchanged whereas the encyclopaedias keep having to be replaced as our understanding evolves