Gerald Durrell
Great Lives
BBC
4.2 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 27 September 2011
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Former England footballer Graeme le Saux champions the life of writer, broadcaster and conservationist Gerald Durrell.
Graeme and presenter Matthew Parris are joined in the studio by Durrell's widow, Lee.
Gerald Malcolm Durrell (1925 - 1995) was a pioneering conservationist who took on the established "zoo community" by emphasising the need to preserve endangered species, rather than just repeatedly dip in to the natural world for more animals to amuse and entertain.
His work culminated in the creation of his own zoo on Jersey. It was there that a teenage islander called Graeme le Saux helped out in the gorilla enclosure, before moving on to play at left back for Chelsea and England.
Producer: John Byrne
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in September 2011.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | My name is Annie Matmanis and my name is Nick Grimshaw. How long have we known each other babe? |
| 0:05.0 | Probably 20 years now and in that time we've always worked in and around music right? |
| 0:10.0 | We have. So it kind of makes sense that we do a podcast better. It sounds |
| 0:13.9 | like he's been 20 years in the making. It's not a avatar for podcasts basically, but it is good. |
| 0:18.6 | So we put the world to rights with Thank you for downloading this great lives podcast from BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:34.0 | For more information and details of other podcasts, just visit BBC.co. UK slash radio 4. |
| 0:41.3 | Welcome. My guest this week is former international footballer Graham Lesseau. |
| 0:47.0 | Jerseyborn Graham played for Chelsea, Blackbren Rovers and Southampton and made 36 senior appearances for England before his retirement from professional football in 2005. |
| 0:57.0 | In 1997 he was the most expensive defender in the English game, moving from Blackburn to Chelsea for 5 million pounds, |
| 1:05.6 | a modest sum by modern standards. |
| 1:08.2 | Graham, who have you chosen as your great life and why? |
| 1:11.6 | I've chosen Gerald Dole, the conservationist. I'm a Jersey boy and grew up |
| 1:16.8 | there and have very strong links with the island, my family, my parents and my father still lives |
| 1:21.3 | in the island. And Gerald Dole has always had a huge |
| 1:24.5 | influence on life in the island from when I was growing up but also so do seed |
| 1:29.7 | really in my environmental values that have stayed with me and I've now passed on to my children. |
| 1:36.6 | So his influence has been great on a day-to-day basis but also I think in the way he saw what was coming and the fact that he was such a great pioneer. |
| 1:45.3 | I must say it's nice of course when a sportsman chooses a sporting hero or a conservationist a conservationist, but I do love great lives programs where my |
| 1:55.1 | guest has gone right outside his or her own field and the choice they've made. |
| 2:00.0 | And all through your career you've surprised and tended to unsettle the football world |
| 2:05.6 | by being interested in other things too and they don't really like that do they? |
| 2:10.1 | It's difficult because you you grow up and your environment, we're talking about the environment, influences you as a person and your interests, I was encouraged to develop my interests outside of football and I think that growing up somewhere like Jersey, |
... |
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