Supervet’s acting past
QUESTION Did TV’s The Supervet Noel Fitzpatrick do a bit of moonlighting as an actor in Heartbeat?
NOEL Fitzpatrick has found fame as The Supervet on Channel 4, but before this, he combined his career as a local vet with acting roles on TV and in films.
Born on December 13, 1967, he grew up on a sheep farm in Mountmellick near Portlaoise in the Midlands, which he described as ‘a bog in the middle of nowhere’.
After studying veterinary medicine at University College, Dublin, he moved to Guildford, Surrey, in 1993 to work in a small animal practice.
As a child, Fitzpatrick was enthralled by the radio production of Under Milk Wood and by the works of Shakespeare and Wilde. During his time in Guildford, he studied for a London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art qualification, which led to some minor acting roles. These include two appearances in ITV’s Heartbeat: as a sheep rustler in January 2000 and as vet Andrew Lawrence in November 2002.
When he appeared in Casualty and the factual series Wildlife SOS on the same weekend, the BBC received complaints that the animal documentary featured an actor who was pretending to be a vet. He has also appeared in the ITV series London’s Burning and The Bill. Big screen roles include horror film The Devil’s Tattoo in 2003 and as a doctor in 2004’s lowbudget Live For The Moment.
In 2005, he set up Fitzpatrick Referrals, a veterinary practice specialising in cutting-edge medical and surgical techniques, leading to the documentary series The Bionic Vet in 2010 and The Supervet, from 2014 to the present.
QUESTION Is it true you can be prosecuted for a ‘crime of opinion’ in Sweden?
WHILE there is no specific ‘crime of opinion’ in Sweden, this terminology has been used to describe the actions of a group called Nathatsgranskaren (Net Hate Examiner), which monitors social media for ‘hate speech’ and reports it to the authorities.
Sweden has tough laws on this type of crime. Racially motivated hate speech is an offence under the provision on agitation against a national or ethnic group.
The Swedish Penal Code says: ‘A person who, in a disseminated statement or communication, threatens or expresses contempt for a national, ethnic or other such group of persons with allusion to race, colour, national or ethnic origin or religious belief, shall be sentenced for agitation against a national or ethnic group to imprisonment for at most two years or, if the crime is petty, to a fine.’
Soon afterwards it emerged that Nathatsgranskaren’s project manager Tomas Aberg was a shadowy character who had changed his name following a conviction for animal cruelty. There have been complaints that the group targets the elderly because they are more likely to submit to the authority of the police.
QUESTION Was there once a craze for making paintings from spider silk?
COBWEB or gossamer painting originated in the Pustertal valley, a stunningly beautiful, isolated valley in the South Tyrol of the Austrian Alps, during the 17th century. The art form first depicted religious figures and motifs which were crafted by monks, and evolved into landscapes and pastoral scenes fashioned by local peasants. Because they were so hard to create, most paintings were only the size of a postcard.
The artist had to collect cobwebs, layer and stretch them over an ovalwindowed canvas, which was washed in milk to strengthen it.
Then the watercolour was gently applied with a fine-tipped woodcock feather brush. It continued in elite pockets in the 18th and 19th century. By the beginning of the 20th century, however, the painstaking practice had died out. Because of their delicacy, only around 100 cobweb paintings are known to still exist.
QUESTION When was the bodhrán invented?
IT’S one of the most basic drums and for many centuries, it has been used widely across the Middle East and northern Africa; how, why and when it came to Ireland is far from clear.
But the earliest form of the bodhrán in Ireland, a skin stretched across a wooden frame, may have been used for carrying peat. One expert on the drum, Dorothea Hast, says that up to the mid-20th century, the bodhrán was used mainly as a tray for separating chaff, in baking and for serving food, as well as for storing food and tools. It had a limited use in rural areas as a musical instrument for ritual purposes.
The earliest written mention in Ireland of the word came in the 17th century, while in the late 18th century, it was in the list of words commonly used in the Baronies of Forth and Bargy in Co. Wexford. That great Irish composer and arranger, Seán Ó Riada, who did so much in the 1960s to bring about a revival of traditional Irish music, greatly enhanced the status of the bohdrán, by saying that it was the native drum of the Celts, 2,000 and more years ago. Another expert on the history of the instrument, Páraic McNeela, says the bodhrán could have been used first in ancient times for winnowing grain or for the dying of wool, while he also believes its use as a musical instrument predates the arrival of Christianity.
By the early 20th century, homemade drumframes were being made, using willow branches as frames, leather as drumheads and pennies as jingles. During the traditional musical revival of the 1960s, largely spearheaded by Seán Ó Riada and bands such as Ceoltóirí Chualann, Ó Riada’s invention, did much to popularise the bodhrán, as did other renowned groups, such as The Chieftains.
During the 1970s, a number of virtuoso bodhrán players, such as Robin Morton of The Boys of the Lough, Peadar Mercier of The Chieftains, Christy Moore of Planxty and Johnny ‘Ringo’ McDonagh of De Dannan, all helped make the bodhrán an internationally recognised instrument far beyond the shores of Ireland.
These days, the bodhrán is seen as a musical instrument with a short history but in truth, its antecedents go back millenia.
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