Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A veterinary surgeon who pioneered animal bionics, fitting the world's first bionic leg on a dog and starring in Channel 4's The Super Vet.
On the island
Eight records
OneFavourite
The lyrics of it are the thing because Bono says, and he's very specific about this. He says, We're not the same. We get to carry each other. And in this era of COVID, we have no choice but to help one another. It's not an obligation, it's a privilege because love will indeed leave you if you don't care for it. And that's what one is about.
And that blew my mind. Because Freddie Mercury … and he wrote the greatest love song, well, in my life anyway, and it's called Love of My Life.
I would just lie on my back and dream that that stairway to heaven existed and that one day I would walk on it and it would bring me to a place of love.
I get a lot of criticism from other vets about what I do … but there's a line in the song that says … don't let them break you because you can do anything you want to do.
I figured if Dave Gahan can survive that hotel room, I could surely survive doing the first pitch for the Super Vet TV show in that same room.
I picked Ruby Tuesday because there's a line in there about losing your dreams and you lose everything. … if you lose your dreams, you lose your mind.
I would encourage all medicine, human and animal, to look beyond profit and look towards the patient.
if medicine opened its mind to a different view, nothing else matters. If you can find trust and not follow the herd and do the right thing, nothing else matters.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:57You might not describe what you do as work, but you do freely admit to being a workaholic, and I know that you put in some punishing hours and you're often getting by on just a couple of hours' sleep. Where does your extraordinary drive come from?
I don't advocate workaholism as a way of life. I mean, I d I'm not saying that that's a good idea, but I just never think really beyond the next patient and the next family that I'm seeing.
Presenter asks
2:39I know you're very passionate about the concept of one medicine, and that encourages collaboration between the medical and veterinary professions for the benefit of both humans and animals. What drew you to this idea in the first place?
It's better as a model, in my opinion, to study naturally occurring disease in dogs and cats and humans at the same time … rather than injecting it into an animal and then studying the effects. And secondly, if you develop intellectual property as a result of that, why don't you share it with the animals? … I donated my intellectual property for the limb amputation prosthesis to the human field, and we still don't have a man and a dog walking down a beach hand in paw with the same technology. That would be a beach of one medicine, and that's the beach I'd like to wash up on.
The keepsakes
The book
The Poems and Letters of Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
the most beautiful thing he ever wrote was the last four lines of a poem to his wife, and he said When wind and winter harden All the loveless land, it will whisper of a garden. That only you will understand. And I want that with me for eternity.
The luxury
I am going to bring a guitar because I have tried so many times to learn guitar and I think all five previous guitar teachers have either left the country or certainly left my practice at 10 p.m. when the lesson was supposed to be at 9. So God bless them all. On the island I'm going to practice guitar.
Presenter asks
5:09When you were in your twenties you went to drama school. Why was it important to you to have that artistic outlet?
Einstein said, one of the greatest scientists of all time said, you cannot feel the meaning of life by trying to rationalize it in the mind. You can only feel it. And I went to drama school because I had studied so hard for many years and I had realized that science was just a blink, just our rationalization at that moment in time, but art transcended all of that.
Presenter asks
12:18What kind of sacrifices did [your mum] have to make? That can be a tough life.
She never had something that she organized, like a social event or something like that, that that she ever actually thought she was gonna go to, 'cause daddy would always be late, or there would always be a cow calving, or there'll be something else going on. So I think her life was filled with little disappointments which she dealt with so gracefully. … She believed in me, you know, sh she she would never say you're not capable of something or that's not your station in life. She allowed me to dream, my mommy did.
Presenter asks
14:42You attended a Catholic boarding school … I know you had a difficult time there. You were out of your depth. I mean, what were you dealing with?
In the end I didn't care about the punches and the kicks and the… pulling up on my underpants. … What I cared about was the only thing that mattered to me. … And they found out what that was. And that was my my copy book. And uh they poured milk over it. They destroyed the only thing that mattered to me … I realized at that moment that I ought not to get attached to anything physical, and the only thing that I could impart was something that could be felt.
Presenter asks
26:59What was the emotional toll of [the Hermes complaint] for you, of your moral and ethical values, which you quite clearly care so passionately about, being questioned?
I was suicidal. Yeah, that's the nuts and bolts of it.
“It's better as a model, in my opinion, to study naturally occurring disease in dogs and cats and humans at the same time, as you will have to do with coronavirus and as, in my opinion, you should do with cancer, rather than injecting it into an animal and then studying the effects. And secondly, if you develop intellectual property as a result of that, why don't you share it with the animals? … I donated my intellectual property for the limb amputation prosthesis to the human field, and we still don't have a man and a dog walking down a beach hand in paw with the same technology. That would be a beach of one medicine, and that's the beach I'd like to wash up on.”
“I remember when I was a I think I was like ten and I asked him for a guitar and he gave me a saw. To saw the horns off a bullock. Because that's how we rolled back then.”
“I didn't care about the punches and the kicks and the… pulling up on my underpants. I never had any underpants elastic left. I didn't care about any of the physical violence of being thrown in the quarry and being covered in bruises and my bike being broken up. What I cared about was the only thing that mattered to me. And they found out what that was. And that was my my copy book. And uh they poured milk over it. They destroyed the only thing that mattered to me … I realized at that moment that I ought not to get attached to anything physical, and the only thing that could [impart] was something that could be felt. And if I do anything in my life, maybe I can make people realize that in that moment of beauty that you share with an animal that doesn't judge you, you don't need a copy book, and it doesn't matter who hits you in the face, because that love transcends all of that.”
“Larry said the most profound thing to me. We're standing there watching the impossible happen when the dog with the broken femur … he's walking across the yard absolutely fine after my rudimentary splint had healed it. And he goes, Ah, there you go now. Sure, everything is impossible until it happens.”
“I was suicidal. Yeah, that's the nuts and bolts of it.”
“On the island I'm going to practice guitar.”