David Bellamy farewell to the man who could have stolen Attenborough's crown
over 4 years in The guardian
While overshadowed by the other David – and out of step on both the EU and climate change – the naturalist and presenter will be remembered for his unbridled enthusiasm for botany
TV naturalist David Bellamy dies aged 86
The jolly, bearded, accessibly scholarly botanist David Bellamy, who has died aged 86, was for many years one of TV’s most effective popularisers of science. That was, until his career stalled when he found himself on the wrong side of the political and environmental climates.
There has always been a tension in British television between the founding aims of the nation’s broadcasting, expressed in the BBC charter – “to inform, educate, and entertain” – with the first two often struggling to compete with the third. One solution to this conflict was the expert who was also eccentric. Between the 1960s and the 1980s, Bellamy was a member of this group of wacky specialists, along with futurologist James Burke, dog psychologist Barbara Woodhouse, and scientists Dr Magnus Pyke and Professor Heinz Woolf, with the last of whom Bellamy appeared in the high-rating ITV scientific brains’ trust formats, Don’t Ask Me (1974-78) and Don’t Just Sit There (1979-80). Continue reading...
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