David Bellamy

David Bellamy0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive.

David Bellamy0:05

For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in 1978 and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:30

This week our castaway is the bearded botanist whom we see on the box. It's doctor David Bellamy. David, are you a Londoner? Yes, yes. Wh whereabouts in London? Well, Mowleybone Road, to be exact. Very handy.

Presenter0:44

Were you bright at school? Oh no, terribly dull I think. I liked playing rugby and I liked chasing the girls and I, you know, liked enjoying myself and academia rather seemed to go out the window. What did you want to be as a boy? I'm not quite sure. Um my parents would have liked me to have been a medic and that's later on when they saw I had some scent between my ears. But I I always thought the stage I'd have liked to have gone into the ballet but then I grew too big. Did you do it? Well you know ve in a very amateurish way. I was very very interested in it and I sort of did a little bit of choreography and hopped about. What did you do when you left school?

Speaker 41:02

Um that

Presenter1:21

Well, I left school with not a very good academic record. In fact, I have a marvellous testimonial which reads Bellamy is a good fellow, maturing well, but he's academically useless. And I went out into the great world with this, and my first job was um collecting up deck chairs on Brighton Beach, and that was a very good job. Good job, yes, I love Brighton Beach.

Speaker 41:37

Well what if that's a good idea

Presenter1:40

Well, in those days I used to cycle down and live underneath Palace Pier where you could sleep for nothing and then you work for the weekend and then having collected up all the deck chairs on Sunday I'd go back home again. But then I did all sorts of interesting jobs. I worked in a sweetie factory at one time making sweeties. Free sweeties you got? Oh, you could eat as many as you liked. That's when I got too large to ever go into the ballet, I think. And all sorts of odd jobs, sort of jobs which you could pick up in those days. And I

David Bellamy1:45

Yeah.

Speaker 41:45

But you could

Presenter2:11

Learned a lot about life and enjoyed myself enormously. Now, how did it come about that you were eventually inspired to go after an academic background? Well, I had been brought up, you know, with academia there, my father being a pharmacist, and I have always felt very sorry that I didn't do as well as I could have done at school. But I got a job in a new technical college in Yule in Surrey. It was just opening, and I was their first lab boy in the biology department. And it was there I met two guys, one called George Fluck, who still works there, and the other Ned Norris, who's now a very high and elevated HMI. And they showed me it was fun to learn. They completely turned me on. They were biologists, so I suppose I became a biologist. Just like that. It really was just like that, because I was lab boy at the tech, and five years later, I was a university lecturer in botany. Let's have your first record. What's that to be? Well, it's Dame Clare of a Butt Seeing the Better Land. I know you're going to ask me why, so I'll tell you. It's because I used to sing this with my granny in her latter years, and on Sundays, we used to sit together and sing this, and I'd sing one half and she'd sing the other.

Speaker 43:34

I hear thee sing on the better land, The court is killed in the happy land. Mother, where is that greed and shine? Showing up here.

Presenter3:51

Dame Clara Butt, the better land. How about music, David? Did you hear a lot as a youngster? Are you a a musical man?

Presenter3:58

Well I'm not a musical man. I heard a lot. My father especially was very interested in music and also my brother. So I heard a lot mainly through the radio of course in those days and through an old wind up record player. Perhaps that's why Clever Butt is one of my favourites. But I have a tin ear. I try to learn to play the piano. I try to sing. You know and I wish when whoever is hands out the talents they'd handed me out a tenor voice. It might have been in some ways more satisfying than being able to remember the Latin names of plants. But no, I like music but I don't think I'm a musician.

Presenter4:34

Well now your academic studies. You went to Chelsea Poly.

Presenter4:38

Yeah, I, while I was at the tech, met Rosemary, who I eventually married, and she was one of these bright people with a, you know, a photographic memory. And I thought, well, if I'm going to ever marry you, I'd better also go to university and get a degree. So we both applied together, and she, of course, got accepted by all the universities under the sun, and I didn't. And I ended up going to Chelsea Poly, which was a super place because the botany department was right in the middle of the art school. And, you know, if you rub shoulders with real artists, then again, you learn lots of new things. Surely. Now, you got your botany degree, but you didn't think that was enough. You went off after further honours. Well, no, I was really turning out to be a biochemist. That was all the rage in those days. Botanists, you know, studied things you squeezed out of plants rather than the plants themselves. And it was in my sort of second year at Chelsea, a wonderful notice came up on those board which said, two spare place on a field trip with Bedford College to Scotland. And I thought, well, I've never been to Scotland and Bedford College is a college for women. It must be good fun. So I signed up and went on to this and met the next guy who really showed me what talent I have, and that is Frances Rose. Because I took no notice of the girls of Bedford College. Some of them were very beautiful, I say this very shamefacedly. But I got really turned on by plants and I found out that if somebody told me what a plant was, I just couldn't forget it. And I cannot, and I can still remember every plant I learnt on that trip and exactly where they grow, Latin names and all. And so then I really did become a botanist. And eventually you were at Durham University? I was teaching botany. You've become fascinated by marine botany, I believe. Well, no, that rather crept up on me. I, if I'm an expert on anything, I'm an expert on peat bogs. And I had been working for what, 10 years trying to find out why peat bogs did what peat bogs do. And we decided up at Durham, it's about time that we tried to put botany on the map because it's not the sort of thing you're going to advise your children to go to university to read. I mean, what's a botanist? You now have the biggest botany department of any university in the country. Well, ours is certainly very big. We're in the top few. But we decided we would put on this course called North East Development and the Plant Sciences. You know, plants are important. And we had all the six form kids come along. We had a super weekend. And during this weekend, I talked about my research up on the Pennine. If only we hadn't mucked about with the peat bogs, then we'd have a much more even flow of water down the Tyne, Weir and Tees, and therefore we wouldn't have nearly as much pollution in the mouths of those rivers. And I forgot about this. And three weeks later, I had a wonderful telephone call which simply said, This is the DSIR Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. Now I stood to attention beside the telephone and they said you've got two years and three thousand pounds to produce us a report on pollution of the North Sea and I said you might have got the wrong bloat, you must be joking. And they said you shouldn't have opened your big mouth, should you? So I started, I had to. I had the money for my first research grant and I became a marine biologist or tried to overnight. Thank goodness my wife was one so she did all the work and I went on talking about it. What's your second record?

Presenter7:55

Uh my second record, well it's Ibert's Divertissimant and the last part, those wonderful uh piano cadenzas.

Speaker 29:03

Yeah.

Presenter9:03

Iberse divertisement played by the Paris Conservatoire Orchestra, conducted by Jean Martin.

Presenter9:09

Now in the course of your various researches and expeditions I find that you've actually been a desert island castaway on three occasions David. Yes well not by myself although I have spent two nights on a desert island all by myself once but on three expeditions I gained notoriety within marine science. I won't say fame, it was notoriety. So I was invited first of all by the Royal Society to lead phase six of their expedition to Aldanborough and one morning I had one of those marvellous envelopes come through the post with the stamp of the Royal Society on it. Now the average age that a botanist gets elected as a fellow of the Royal Society is about 193 but I couldn't help thinking perhaps they've made a mistake and I opened this thing and inside it was not the final accolade inside but even more exciting to lead a major scientific expedition underwater to Aldanbra and what we found on there when you go on an expedition it answers questions but you always must make sure it asks more so you can go on another one. So I've led two since that both to the central Indian Ocean and in all I've spent what eight and a half months of my life cast away and the boat drops you down it sails off into the distance and you know it's not coming back for three months. It's a great feeling. How many chaps were with you on each occasion? Well on the first time there were five of us and then on the second there were thirteen and on the third seventeen. So the castaway-ness has got less and less. But you were left with supplies and all sorts of luxuries. Now you know the form.

David Bellamy10:33

But

Presenter10:38

You're really on your own. Well, you know the hazards. Could you look after yourself if it happened again and

Presenter10:45

I think so. My major problem would be that I do not like killing animals, yet I would have to fish to live.

Speaker 410:45

I think so.

David Bellamy10:46

Yeah.

Presenter10:53

Yeah, I certainly could and I'm sure I would enjoy it but for a few things I would miss. It's a marvellous thing to actually have to

Presenter11:04

Fend for yourself and use the environment round about you and to become part of it. And this is a story I tell and it actually did happen. When you have lived on, especially you dive every day, as we were on all these expeditions, you suffer from a thing called coral sores. You get cut and the cut goes. I'm sorry to talk about this, it's revolting, but you get worse and worse and worse until whatever's got the sore on falls off, which is very inconvenient. There's only two cures for this. You've either got to keep out of the sea or you've got to have, you know, a large injection of penicillin. Well, I found the perfect cure because one day I was diving and I got coral sores very badly. And suddenly I realized that I had jumped the queue at a cleaner station on the reef. Now, you know, there are stations where all the big fish come along and queue up and little tiny rats come out and clean them up and take the parasites and things off. And well, I jumped the queue and there was a large group and a shark waiting and there was this blowing bubble idiot who'd sat there. I was simply taking down the names of all the corals and all the cleaner fish were coming and cleaning up my sores. Now that night when I came up my sores started to heal up. So everything is some antibiotic in these fish. And since then I've never ever had to inject myself. I just go and get cleaned at the cleaner station. But once you've been part of a natural living system like that, you've got nothing left to live for. So I'm sure I could integrate with my coral reef and let it keep me. Apart from your loved ones, what did you miss most in civilization? What did you long for? Was it...

Speaker 412:15

And

Presenter12:35

Well basically children. Um I think plants and ballet and children are the thing that switch me on most and children most of all. Why don't you have another record? Well uh perhaps a peculiar one but please just children's voices.

Presenter13:20

Well, that was a mixed nursery school of two and three year olds trying to play singing games, it says. Fabulous.

Presenter13:28

Now you had the cloistered calm of Durham University. How did television come into your life? Well I was working on marine pollution before Torrey Canyon went down and there were very very few people working on marine pollution in those days. So of course when Torrey Canyon went down you know the news had to look around and say who can come and talk about it and they found that I was working on it so I was dragged screaming out of my ivory tower and stuck in front of one of these things which is between us and I was discovered and I've never been off since. You were really put on first as an apologist. That's it yes I had to talk about you know the terrible things Torrey Canyon might have done to the marine system. Funnily enough we had just finished a complete survey of the Cornish coast three months before Torrey Canyon went down so we really did have pre-pollution data. And then came your first series which was Bellamy on Botany. Well it wasn't. It's one everyone forgets actually. It was called Life in Our Sea which was about the North Sea and it was wonderful German material which I simply revamped and put my terrible voice over. But my first real series yes was Balameon Botany, which was fairly elementary.

Presenter14:39

Yeah, well, um, you know, they said talk about botany, so I went and talked about botany. They wanted to call it David and Flora and I said, No, I won't have any called David and Flora. It became Bellamy on Botany. I've been I've been looking at the book version, it it taught me a lot. I never realized that this country was linked to the continent until only eight thousand years ago. Yes. Almost living memory, isn't it? Um I mean you know the EEC was there long before we thought it up.

David Bellamy14:46

So no, I won't have equal family.

David Bellamy14:50

Talking.

David Bellamy14:57

Yes, almost.

Presenter15:05

Record number four. Um, well, uh, the Carmina Boirana, I'm sure I haven't said that properly, but only if I can have the record sleeve as well, because it happened to have my favorite picture on the front, Hyron was Bosch's Garden of Delights.

Speaker 415:41

Praise the Lord, Lord God, we are all

Speaker 416:04

Hence, if I am to go to

Presenter16:14

An excerpt from Karloff's Carmena Burana, played by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Anto Dorati.

Presenter16:21

Now your second series, or your third series, or your next series, let's say, on on television, two years later, Bellamy's Britain. This was a a a wider canvas.

Presenter16:31

Yes, well it was trying to make people really look round them and get the enjoyment I get out of driving up the M1. I mean I go up the M1 and these wonderful things come up, you know, junction 32. Now I know that I'm just crossing, you know, a bit of the Jurassic stuff and I know that dinosaurs were clapping out on there so I can sort of transform myself back all those millions of years, see the rotten, see what was happening then. I also know that perhaps I've just gone over the northern limit of Onobrychis Visaefolia. Now that may not be important to you but if I told you that that was a plant which you can always see down on your holidays in the Mediterranean, it just finds its northern limit coming into County Darwin. Now that's exciting because as you go along you're crossing these limitations and you know I think we should have the real sort of signs of the countryside up telling us where we are and that's what the series was all about.

David Bellamy17:21

Smelling a

Presenter17:24

You also began appearing on on on a pop science programme, Don't Ask Me.

Presenter17:29

Well, I mean I appeared behind Magnus Pike. It's really Magnus' show. He is the greatest as far as I'm concerned in getting the enthusiasm of science. I'm rather jealous because he can do things like have explosions and look at lightning which are much more exciting than some of my plants. Yeah you and Magnus may go right Pat. There was one memorable programme in which you sat in a pool communicating with a dolphin.

Presenter17:53

Well, yeah, because I think one day we us human beings are going to learn to talk with dolphins. I hope so, because when you're underwater with dolphins, they're trying to talk to you and they think you're pretty stupid. But actually, television programmes with dolphins and other members of the underwater mammals have got me probably into more trouble than anything. How did you get on with this dolphin? Did you have a nice chat? Oh, well, you know, I mean, it comes up and it communicates and it tows you round. But we were doing one marvellous one where we were trying to show how well the dolphin is adapted to living in cold water because they're warm-blooded animals like me. And I was swimming round and round the pool with the dolphins. And when the trainer blew the whistle, instead of the dolphin coming out, I landed out and ate the fish, you see. But then this wonderful dolphin called Honey, who was a lady dolphin, came out and attempted to mate with me on the side of the pool. And it really was fantastic because this was all done in infrared.

David Bellamy18:46

And

Presenter18:50

And we both glowed with passion together. It really was super. You also had a certain amount of trouble with a whale. Well, it was in the same place. I got in the water with it and it knew it was onto a soft touch. Here was an idiot botanist and it only had to smile at me and I'd give it a fish. So it started playing with me. And at one point, I remember it got hold of my leg and I just didn't relax in the water and trying to get my leg out. So its teeth started going through and blood started trickling down my knee. And I remember saying to the trainer, I don't think it's playing anymore. And he said, well, get out. Well, how the hell do you get out of a pool when you've got two and a half tons of whale hanging onto your leg? But it was super, it spat me out and I got out. And then the director said, no, didn't get it. Do it all over again. So we did it all over.

Speaker 419:04

Hmm.

David Bellamy19:27

Uh

Presenter19:33

Record number five. Well, um I'm going to be cast away a long way away from the cool beauty of Britain and I don't like the heat all that much so if I can have the dawn chorus just to remind me of what Britain's like, Ludwig Koch please.

Presenter20:20

Ludwig Koch's recording of the Dawn Chorus doesn't say where he recorded it, but it was in fact June 1942.

Presenter20:27

Now you were developing, things were getting bigger after Bella's Britain came Bella's Europe. Now this took a couple of years to get sorted out isn't it? Well it took quite a long time to make because I am a full-time university lecturer and so it had to be made during the VAC so it took longer than it need to have done you know if I'd have been a full-time television person. But of course I had been doing research for the past what then 18, 19 years all the way around Europe so I simply could go to places which I'd been to before and get plugged in and working with Mike Wetherley who's a really fabulous guy both as producer and director he sort of fills me in with the bits I don't know. Any particular excitements you remember? Oh I don't know. I think the most exciting programme actually to make was Venice because Venice has always fascinated me as a city and you know one sees so many films about Venice and you always see the Bridge of Sighs and Doge's Palace and we went and we looked behind statues and looked at the weird sort of plants and you know microscopic things going and it was a fabulous series to make simply because it allowed me behind the scenes of Venice I could actually go into the crypts of churches now and see things which the average visitor can't. Does your wife Rosemary go on some of your travels with you? Well as much as she can but we have five children at the moment and it seems to go up and up. Every time I go away we adopt another one and so we take them if we can. In fact they all came to Venice and we had a marvellous time poking around all the churches together, moving babies up and down through little tiny trap doors and things. Yes, I mean my wife is the brains of the outfit. When we took finals at the university she came top of London University and I came you know several steps down. So I rely on her enormously for you know telling me that I'm doing the right thing scientifically and of course the right thing with my children. I have a multinational family of all shapes, sizes, colours and creeds and they are super. Tell me where you found them.

David Bellamy22:26

Yeah.

Presenter22:28

Well, I found them all with the, we call it the Church of England Building Society, but it's the Church of England Children's Society. We've adopted them all through. But they are from, well, Rufus is our own, then Henrietta is English, we adopted her, Bridget is from Guyana, Ewan is from Kashmir, and the latest one is from the West Indies.

David Bellamy22:37

But they don't think they are.

Presenter22:53

Record number six. Well, my love of ballet and I want something I can go leaping about on the digital island. I thought marvellous. I'll be able to wait till the sand has been smoothed out by the wind or the tide and then I can play the final part of Capalia and I can dance my heart out to it and then I can sit back and see where I went wrong because my footsteps will be there in the sand.

Presenter24:15

The closing passage of Tadib's Coppelia Ballet

Presenter24:19

And it's also made conducting the Swiss Romant Orchestra. Well, now.

Presenter24:24

is the biggest um television series of the lot Botanic Man which is really Bellamy's world isn't it? Yes but you really mustn't say that because I hope it just isn't a travelogue of me going round the world looking at all the most mind-blowing things. It is really my life's work coming out and therefore it could be the most boring thing that ever happened because you never really should talk about what you think you're an expert in. Now we look at evolution of plants on a world scale, how the different plant communities evolved and how important they are to you and I. And to me it's the most exciting thing I've ever been out. I mean you imagine someone coming on saying right make a series about the world of plants. In twelve months I have been around the world three times and I have seen the cross section of the total of vegetation of the world and I've come back and now I've got to sit down although I've written two books to go with it. I've now got to come back, sit down and write another book because I have seen what no other botanist has ever

Speaker 424:58

And tomorrow

Presenter25:23

I've been privileged to see and my ideas have changed and all of a sudden I do realize some of the gaps there were in my knowledge. So I've advanced myself and I hope the programme and the books and the whole education package that goes with it will have put over the world I have just seen. The programme's even taking you all to the North Pole. Well we hope to get to the North Pole but the plans, you know, even if they are very well laid, sometime come to naught. And when we were finally given the bill it would have cost to put two helicopters into the North Pole just, you know, although it was the perfect place to say what I had to say, there were many other things, you know, that were perhaps more important. So we got within 600 miles of it. A good enough background to say what you had to say. Perfect, but not quite as perfect. I wanted to stand there at the North Pole and say, today I feel on top of the world.

David Bellamy25:57

Um

Presenter26:20

And, you know, that's the only thing I couldn't say. Let's have another record.

Presenter26:26

Well, um something so that I can sit there and really enjoy the music and the singing and also to give me a visual image. So it's Schubert's Ave Maria, but the track from Walt Disney's Fantasia.

Presenter27:40

Ave Maria from the soundtrack of Walt Disney's Fantasia. What's your last rate ought to be?

Presenter27:46

Well, one thing I am going to miss apart from children is the female sex because although I say I'm moderately practical, if it wasn't for my wife who completely and totally looks after me, I wouldn't be here speaking to you at all. In fact, I wouldn't do half the things. And there's one woman whose voice says femininity and everything to me, and that's Edith Piaff, and I love her singing Je Sais Commour.

Speaker 228:21

Eh, good moi mon ami.

Speaker 228:25

Hematula Liberty.

Speaker 228:29

I'm not sure if I can do it.

Speaker 228:34

Emerate you Teva D

Presenter28:39

Et piaf je c'est common. If you could take just one disc out of the eight, which? It would be clever but, because it reminds me of my young days and especially my family and my grandmother. And you're allowed to take one luxury to the island, one thing of no practical use whatever. Well, it would be a a linen sheet.

Presenter28:58

So that I could get underneath it because I do like getting into a fresh linen sheet at night. Give you a pair. Thank you.

David Bellamy29:06

We'll give you a spare pair as well.

Presenter29:07

Yeah.

Presenter29:08

And one book apart from the Bible and Shakespeare, which are already on the island, and we don't allow multi-volume encyclopedias. Well, that is the most difficult thing, but I will stick to the Lord of the Rings Tolkien. Right.

Presenter29:23

The Lord of the Rings, and thank you, David Bellamy, for letting us hear your desert island discs. Thank you very much. Goodbye, everyone.

David Bellamy29:38

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.