LIVE 24-SEVEN
OPERATING ON AND SAVING ANIMALS THAT OTHERWISE WOULD BE CONSIDERED BEYOND SAVING
medal for it, that’s just the way life is.
Meant in the nicest possible way, you’re a bit like a mad professor! The gadgets you invent to ensure a dog can walk again or a rabbit can move are beyond the imagination really; where do those eureka moments come from? [laughing] Well that’s exactly one of the top three reasons for doing the show, ‘cos I get letters from kids across the land and they say ‘Dear Professor Fitzpatrick, I know you have no time, but could you please just answer these questions…’ and the there’s three or four questions, you know, written on seven A4 pieces of paper, so exactly like you’ve just asked me, what we’re going to do in the show is try to bring to life the mental process that goes behind the development of each implant system. So, there’s a lollipop lady at a zebra crossing, there’s a Christmas tree being pushed into a Christmas tree truck and how that gives rise to an intervertebral distraction device that people have seen on the show a million times. So, it’s your ordinary, everyday things that give you ideas; I’m looking around all the time, like now there’s a lovely lampshade in this hotel that would make the perfect covering for one of the wounds I’ve been trying to protect – [laughing] it comes from everywhere! It’s a beautiful lampshade really, perfect for what I need it for! [laughing] Take it! They’re a generous bunch here!
Noel, I have so many questions to ask you, so they’ll probably come out like lottery balls…no particular order! I’ll start with the raw emotion that oozes from your TV series, even people without pets can’t help but be touched by it, you must be emotionally drained – or knackered might be nearer the mark – after a day spent doing what you do! How do you come down after a day like that? Funny you should say that, as the reason why I’m late getting to you is that I’ve just taken a phone call from work about a dog who we were up with last night until after midnight. But the honest truth is I don’t, because you can’t really detach, because it’s your moral responsibility and regardless of what’s going on in life, whether it’s TV, the tour or something else, I’m attached to the constraint of the animal I’ve operated on. I go to rock concerts from time to time, but at the end of the day I remember walking out of a Sting concert before my favourite number because I had to go and look after a dog, you know! Awww. But that’s just the way it is you know, it’s ok, I’m not looking for a
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Oscar the cat, who was the first animal in the world to receive two bionic leg implants and sent you into the Guinness Book of Records, was that a career defining or career ‘changing’ moment for you? Not really. My friend Jim and I started out to make the Bionic Vet, which was when Oscar was. We wanted to make a show that was more about love than science and what we made was more about science than love, so when we came back to it the second time with Supervet, we wanted to make a show that was very much about love. The remarkable thing about Oscar was he was in every newspaper in the world; he was in the Himalayan Times – you know I didn’t even know the Himalayas had a Times! [laughing] The remarkable thing about that is that it captures the public’s imagination and it’s really important that we harness that into a more collective responsibility for animals everywhere – and for each other. So, defining things are no more or no less than animals that capture the public’s imagination and in so doing they in their own way blaze a trail that helps other animals in the future.
When you were training, did you ever imagine that you would be doing what you do now – spinal implants and bionic limbs? No! When I graduated in 1990 I remember saying to people in my first year in practice, “I’m sorry nothing can be done”. I hated saying that. Even today people say, “I’m sorry nothing can be done”.
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