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Jolly Green Giant by David Bellamy
Jolly Green Giant by David Bellamy
I was organising the Brighton Conference of 1965, and groaned when someone suggested as a speaker some botanist chap called David Bellamy from Durham University, whose subject would be marine pollution.
Marine pollution? At a diving conference? All I could think of doing was to put him on first thing Sunday morning, when hung-over divers would still be drifting in.
That was the first time I met a long-standing friend and probably the world's most travelled and eloquent conservationist, David Bellamy. As he recalls in his autobiography Jolly Green Giant, his opening words at the conference were: 'Men who go down to the sea for whatever purpose are likely to see their own business in the great waters...'
There was rapturous applause by the end of his talk, and David became a fixture at Brighton Conferences thereafter.
He would go on to become hugely popular on TV and radio, and a 'must-have' speaker at national and international events. But he wasn't all talk.
Given a grant of £3000 in the 1960s to produce a report on pollution along the North-east coast, he and some enthusiasts from Durham BSAC dreamed up Operation Kelp. It required hundreds of divers to survey kelp beds, checking depth range, age, length and dry weight.
Through Diver (then Triton) hundreds of divers did volunteer, and the operation was a great success, providing a baseline picture of the clarity of British waters. Another similar study, Operation Starfish, again highlighted the value amateur divers can offer in scientific and academic fields.
Bellamy's book is a fascinating memoir of a remarkable man, revealing an adventurous and amusing life. It includes such anecdotes as his proposal of marriage to his wife, Rosemary, in the middle of a bog; their adoption of five children; his impromptu appeal to the Queen in the Royal Box when compering a charity show at the Albert Hall; his arrest in Tasmania for attempting to stop a dam being built, and many other stories. A great read.
Bernard Eaton
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Jolly Green Giant by David Bellamy (Century, ISBN 0712683593). Hardback, 409pp, £16.99
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