The roles of Supervet Noel
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 Irish 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 lead 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 low-budget live For The Moment.
In 2005, he set up Fitzpatrick Referrals, a veterinary practice specialising in cuttingedge medical and surgical techniques. This work led to the documentary series The Bionic Vet in 2010 and The Supervet, from 2014 to the present.
Mrs D. Ellery, London SE12.
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.’
last year, Nathatsgranskaren’s project manager Tomas Aberg told Swedish daily newspaper Aftonbladet: ‘ We have developed a programme that looks for criminal networks on social media by searching for keywords, combinations of words and phrases that can constitute criminal acts.’
Several pensioners have been tried for hate speech. A 70-year- old woman in Dalarna was prosecuted for comments about migrants made online in 2015.
Soon afterwards, it emerged that 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.
Simon Taylor, Birmingham.
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 part of the South Tyrol in the Austrian Alps, during the 17th century.
The art form began as religious figures and motifs which were crafted by monks, and evolved into landscapes and pastoral scenes made by local peasants.
Because they were so hard to create, most of these gossamer paintings were only the size of a postcard.
The artist had to collect cobwebs, layer and stretch them over an ovalwindowed canvas. It was washed in milk to strengthen it.
Then the watercolour was gently applied with a fine-tipped woodcock feather brush. The difficulty of producing these works was an important aspect of the process — the artists sought to express their devotion by mastering the most difficult canvas imaginable.
Painter elias Prunner was the first to practise this as a commercial art form. He was drawn to the transparent effect of the cobwebs, and his Madonna and the Child are outlined with an ethereal glow. In 1765, he painted the Holy Roman empress Maria Theresa.
Artists in the Tyrolean Alps were said to prefer cobwebs from the caterpillar of the small silver-grey spotted moth, Yponomeuta evonymella, and funnel- weaver spiders of the family
Agelenidae because of their elasticity and strength.
In the 1800s, dealer Franz Richard Unterberger of Innsbruck employed local artists to produce cobweb paintings of landscapes, duchesses, kings and military scenes to sell to tourists.
These were also exported to Britain, Germany and North America.
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. Charles Fry, Lymington, Hants.