You have to laugh…
After the 4th crisis in about 20 minutes you half expect complacency to start creeping in.
This was swiftly followed by a natural world program that had Brian Blessed as the guest.
It was from 1975 and Brian was talking quite softly with a strange posh sort of accent. He hadn’t developed his booming delivery but all the signs of his future shtick where there.
You have a great love of mountaineering Brian, tell us about that.
“Oh yes, you never feel so at peace, so free, the clean air. I was with Roger Pemberton in the Himalayas, our bags were carried by Sherpas, marvellous people”.
Do you ever feel afraid when you’re on the mountain?
“Terrified, absolutely terrified, I can’t stand heights I have vertigo. Roger is the same he has vertigo too. We all have our Everest's we have to face”.
Brian is totally winging it at this point, he’s run out of anecdotes and has been reduced to, well, naming mountains that he must have looked up in a schoolboy project sort of way. I’m already laughing by this time. The interviewer moves on.
Brian, your other love is big cats, tell us about that.
“Ah, big cats, marvellous creatures. Lions, Tigers, small cats too… the ocelot etc. The mountain leopard the snow leopard. They are in danger, I’ve been working with young people…… it’s not true…… sleeping in their tents to get tickets for a Tchaikovsky concert, they’re not always protesting. The civet! The Canadian mountain lion…… they are not like us they are not sentimental they will eat their infants. We shouldn’t keep them.”
Do you have any cats, Brian?
“I do yes, but I move them on as quickly as possible. Back to the wild”.
The bed is rocking with my suppressed laughter and Mrs B wakes up.