"BACK in BRENTFORD"

WEIGH-IN WEDNESDAY

Now back in Brentford I am under the close scrutiny of Miss Cynthia Franke who has "suggested" I return to my 5/2 Diet Days and that I should also remember to "write down all the calories I eat" like I did before! The Results of which will be published next week - watch this space! I know some of you are wanting answers now - but that's tough-titty I'm afraid - I'm my own man - all in good time - when I'm ready to show & tell. xx

CHARITY NIGHT IN BUDE

My final night in Cornwall was spent over in Bude. I was asked to attend a Charity Evening at the Falcon Hotel there. This was to raise money for the "Sea Pool" in Bude - which is natural pool full of sea-water that the locals use for their children. The evening began with them showing my SHOW REEL to about 80 people who had all paid £20 for the privilege! There was a Cornish Supper of Pasty & Chips. I gave a short talk and then the rest of the time comprised of a Q & A.

Our friend Nikki Bradbury - The Pasty Shop Owner - came along to keep Cindy company. She was disappointed with the Pasties, which we no where as good as hers! The evening was sponsored by Mercedes Benz which provided a very nice saloon car to chauffeur us there and back.

With some of the Bude Desperate Housewives.

With some of the Bude Desperate Wive's Husbands.

The evening raised £1955 for the Sea Pool which was great. I received a nice email the next day thanking me for coming and saying how much everyone had enjoyed the evening.

SCOTT BUNCE BECOMES A DAD.

The following day we dropped around to see Scott (our 2nd Assistant Director on DOC MARTIN) who's girlfriend Kate had given birth to their daughter, - Nell a few hours earlier in Truro Hospital.

With Baby Nell

The Bunce Family in St Teath

"HIGH SOCIETY"

On returning to London we took ourselves off to see my friend RUPERT who was starring in the musical HIGH SOCIETY at the Old Vic. This was one of the final shows under the leadership of Kevin Spacey - and we weren't disappointed!

This turned out to be a fabulous show. The choreography from start to finish was excellent. This one musical proved to me that the Brits could do as good a job as Broadway - which as always leads the way. The Set - staged in the round - was superb - with very witty scene changes. Rupert sang & danced like a dream - I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this will lead to better things for him.

After the show we headed off to JOE ALLENS for a catch-up & a de-brief of the Show. We were joined by JEFF RAWLE an old friend of mine from Drama School days who was also in the Show.

MAISIE IN PERU.

After a short holiday having arrived safely in PERU, Maisie has reached her First Residency where she has joined her colleagues as an Artist in Residence. Here was her comment on arrival:

Sorry I haven't been in touch! I am alive and loving the first residency. I did an artist presentation yesterday in front of 30 people yesterday and survived- my idea of hell! 

Once I am in the 2nd residency I will be better at keeping in touch as there is not really that much access to internet here. 

Love to you all! xxxx

-- 

Maisie McNeice

I am just so relieved she has made it safely to her first big adventure. The photos that she has been sharing on Facebook have been extraordinary. 

ANGUS

Angus saw his first article published by THE WASHINGTON POST this week. After all the brouhaha started by "The Death of Cecil The Lion" and the alleged killer - Minnesota Dentist

Walter Palmer, Angus pitched his article to several newspapers and was immediately snapped 

up by THE POST:

I saw my first poisoned lion carcass in the African wilderness when I was 12 years old. The lion had eaten from a donkey baited with pesticide by a local farmer in retaliation for cattle lost to predation. Dozens of dead vultures formed rings around the remains of the livestock animal, like ripples from a pebble tossed in a pond. The effects of a poisoning surge through the local ecosystem, killing all manner of scavengers.

Raised on a lion research station in northern Botswana, I saw many lions succumb to natural causes. Such losses are sustainable; however, starting in the late ‘90s, as conflict between predators and humans escalated, we also lost dozens of lions to poison. They died a slow and painful death.

Heading out into the bush to radio-track our collared study animals, once a joyful experience, soon filled me with anxiety, as we encountered increasing numbers of dead lions in the no man’s land between protected wilderness and farmland.

Years later, the furor this week surrounding the death of Cecil the lion has filled me with mixed emotions. I am encouraged to see lions featured in an international discussion, and dismayed to see the genuine challenges of 21st century lion conservation overshadowed by a witch hunt for Cecil’s alleged killer, Minnesota dentist Walter Palmer. That sentiment is shared by Laurence Frank, a research associate at University of California at Berkeley, who has conducted predator research in Kenya for 40 years.

“It’s frustrating to see vast press coverage on the shooting (albeit repugnant) of one aged lion, while thousands are poisoned, speared and snared every year and no one pays any attention,” says Frank. “Like everyone else in this business, I am beyond sick of the hunting debate and wish there were some way to focus public outrage on the issues that really matter.”

Across Africa, the grazing lands of rural farmers share borders with wilderness areas. Predators that move to the periphery of protected areas due to hunger, fear, drought or chance, often prey on livestock and are at risk of retaliatory poisoning by farmers.

Craig Packer, the director of the University of Minnesota’s lion research center, believes retaliatory killing is a more pressing issue than the 600 or so trophy lions killed each year. It is hard to estimate the number of African lions that starve due to dwindling prey numbers, or that are shot, trapped or poisoned by farmers and poachers, though many argue that this figure eclipses trophy hunting. In Kenya alone, scientists estimate that 100 lions are killed illegally each year by people.

[Rich American tourists kill hundreds of lions each year, and it’s legal]

“It’s impossible for us to attribute the percentage of lions lost to different causes — the consensus, though, is that the two leading contributors are habitat loss and retaliatory killing,” says Packer, who conducted lion research in Tanzania for 35 years. “We can also say that poorly regulated sports hunting has also contributed to [continued population decline].”

Should the media solely choose to focus on the hunting debate, the vilification of an American dentist will surely not discourage the world’s sport hunters, a community that at times seems to revel in an “us and them” mentality.

A bad guy at the center of a narrative certainly makes it more intriguing, though in many cases Palmer is a red herring. The international disgust toward the poachers of southern Africa’s rhinos helps fast-track efforts to hunt the perpetrators down directly and individually. However, conservation is best conducted through policy — to believe that Africa’s animal black market will be controlled via picking off its foot soldiers is to believe that America’s illegal drug trade can be resolved by policing street corners.

A poor, rural farmer, for whom cows are cash, is a harder figure to demonize than a Minnesota dentist with a bow and arrow, but this character needs equal attention. He and his family live alongside wild animals, and lions can get nasty.

As a child, I was often terrified by their aggression, speed and power. They instill fear in rural communities that have precious livestock to protect. One man’s symbolic beast is another man’s sworn enemy. If trophy hunting were eliminated tomorrow, which could be done with a signature, the unresolved and complex issue of shared territory between humans and lions would maintain the species’ road to extinction.

This is not to let hunters off the hook. A well-run hunting concession that sustains a wildlife population and acts as a buffer between agricultural land and protected areas can prove an impracticable objective. Packer says many hunting concessions in Tanzania, for example, are under-funded and cannot achieve this task, and hunters just finish off the job the farmers were threatening to perform.

[Did Walter Palmer give Ceil the lion a ‘fair chance’?]

“In Tanzania, a lot of hunting blocks received little protection, they lost their wildlife, and now they’re gone,” Packer says. “Hunters, in the absence of adequate funding and investment, are basically strip-mining the wildlife while it’s still there and not doing anything to prevent their eventual disappearance.”

While on the face of it Cecil’s $50,000 price tag would suggest otherwise, Packer says that the economic contribution of hunting to governments, conservation and local communities is “piffling.” One study suggests that as little as 3 percent of hunting revenues go to local communities living in hunting areas and in Namibia, the country where hunting comprises the greatest portion of the national economy, trophy hunting contributes a “completely insignificant” 0.27 percent of GDP.

The reality is that without dramatic changes to conservation, most of the wild animals outside of well-managed protected areas in Africa are going to be lost, hunters or no hunters, and wild land will be replaced by human settlement and agriculture. For Packer and several other lion researchers, increased funding into lion conservation and fencing are the two best options for bolstering those protected zones.

These researchers are the people who provide the data with which government policies and conservation strategies are made. It is often grueling, dangerous and thankless work, conducted at the mercy of volatile and limited funding streams. Researchers are often despised by some within their communities — seen as a threat by farmers and hunters — and sometimes their research permits are not renewed due to pressure from powerful hunting companies. Packer himself says he was forced out of Tanzania after 35 years of research after being accused of “meddling with lion hunting.”

[The big business of big game trophy hunting]

Working in the wilderness is both a privilege and a lot of hard work. Field researchers operate on shoestring budgets and are in it for the love, not the money. They connect us with the day to day stories of animals surviving under increasing pressure. It is critical that these stories are told and that the data that arises can inform policy makers. There will be no one size fits all resolution and researchers on the ground must be supported in order to provide regionally specific strategies.So if the thousands of people who have taken to social media following the death of Cecil really want to make a difference, they should turn away from the pantomime villain of the tourist hunter and donate to conservation efforts that directly fund independent lion research projects.

BIG FINISH PRODUCTIONS

This week had me in a Recording Studio at the top of Ladbroke Grove bringing back my portrayal of WINSTON CHURCHILL. Big Finish Productions are the AUDIO-BOOKS section of Doctor Who. They had written 4 new Audio Books with me in mind as Winston. 

The 4 Stories were each entitled: 1.'THE CHURCHILL YEARS: THE ONCOMING STORM" 2."THE CHURCHILL YEARS: "HOUNDED" 3."THE CHURCHILL YEARS: LIVING HISTORY" 4."THE CHURCHILL YEARS: THE CHARTWELL STORY. Each book took about a day to record and each required other actors to play the other roles - as they were written in a theatrical format.

I am told they will be released in January 2016 and the 4 CD's will be in a Box Set - sadly not quite in time for Christmas 2015, but, hey, there is always the following year.

TORQUAY

The Weekend saw me back on the Convention Circuit - this time back to the West Country in Torquay which is in Devon. It gave me a chance to catch up with the American Actor Ernie Hudson, who was flown over to appear in a retrospective of "Ghostbuster Actors". Ernie and I worked together  on an Action Movie called "NO ESCAPE" which we filmed in the Rain Forests of North Queensland, Australia with the Actor from "Goodfellas" - Ray Liotta. 

It brought back memories of Ray who was the first real METHOD ACTOR I'd ever worked with. Which meant - if it was a "Good Day" in the Script - Ray would say hello to you, but if it was a "Bad Day" - he wouldn't talk to anybody!!

Here I am with one of those crazy Costume Fans - I think his actual feet are where the Costume's knees are.

It also gave me a chance to use the BANNER I've had made up!

CARL MONGOMERY.

During the week I met up with Christopher Monger's brother-in-law Carl Mongomery who was on a fleeting visit to London with his new Persian girlfriend. They had just spent a few days in Ireland - Maisie had given them a few tips about where to visit in Dublin. I suggested a few restaurants myself - but I'm sure once they start exploring themselves they will come across places of their own.

EMILY

Looks like the Roberts Family are having a good time on their Holiday in Spain. I think Angus is due to join them there soon. So have a great time everyone! Warning! I will need a full report for my Blog with photos at some point - thanks!