Vorspeisenplatte

Wie wir aus seinem Twitter-Stream wissen, hat Stephen Fry letztes Jahr eine Neuauflage der BBC-(Radio)-Serie “Last Chance to See” gefilmt, die sein Freund Douglas Adams vor 15 Jahren mit Mark Carwardine unternahm und die in meinem liebsten Buch von Douglas Adams resultierte. Im Guardian schreibt Fry, wie es dazu kam. Und wie er seinerzeit Adams’ neue Begeisterung für Evolution und gefährdete Tierarten erlebte.

I had been sharing a place in Dalston at this time with a group of friends from university, but we were now at the stage where it was possible to consider splitting up and buying our own flats and houses. I wanted to find a place in Islington, but also felt that I needed time to look around and wait for the perfect property. Perhaps I should rent first? I offloaded my tedious residential worries on Douglas one afternoon as we sat in his study staring at a Mac and wondering, for the thousandth time, if we could stop it going “boing” and closing down whenever we tried to do something unusual with it.

“Why don’t you stay here for a year?” he suggested. “You can house-sit for me. I’ve decided to go round the world for 12 months seeking out rare animals.”

“You’ve de-whatted to go round the what, whatting out whats?”

Douglas explained that his journey to Madagascar had lit a fire within him that would not go out. In the company of a zoologist called Mark Carwardine, he had found and photographed the elusive lemur known as the aye-aye, an experience, together with reading Dawkins, that had made him realise that the technology that now most excited him was the one that had evolved over millions of years and resulted in him and me and, ultimately, the device that wouldn’t stop going “boing”. He really wanted to understand this business of life and extinction. He and Mark had hit it off straightaway, and the plan was now to find seven more species like the aye-aye that were in imminent danger of disappearing for ever.

Nächste Woche bin ich in England und werde mir sehr sicher das neue Buch Last Chance to See holen. Und hoffentlich herausfinden, wann BBC die neue Serie sendet.