STEPHEN’S BEASTLY FEAST

Stephen Fry hunts down the origins of mythical creatures in a charming new documentary

This was a rare disappointment in the successful career of Harry Potter creator JK Rowling. She was determined to prove she could conjure up a creature purely from her own imagination, and the result was the lethifold, which she included in Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them, the 2001 guidebook that would later inspire the hugely successful Fantastic Beasts films.

‘I created my worst nightmare, a floating cloak that would scare the bejesus out of me if it existed,’ she tells Stephen Fry in a new documentary, BBC1’S Fantastic Beasts: A Natural History.

‘Then I stood back from my invention and realised that the lethifold I’d “created” was a version of the manta ray – only one that didn’t need water!

‘It made me realise how hard it is to invent something new because nature’s often got there first and done it much better.

‘And where would I be without creatures inspired by nature, such as the dragons in Harry Potter or the niffler from Fantastic Beasts, a mixture of a mole, a magpie and a duck-billed platypus? Half my books would fold without them!’

A cute little CGI niffler scurries around the Natural History Museum in London, as Stephen Fry films the documentary that explores the real-life inspiration behind mythical creatures like the kraken and mermaid.

He discovers it’s often been primal fear that has propelled ordinary creatures into the realms of folklore and terror.

‘One recent theory suggests dragons are a combination of the three animals our early ancestors would have been most afraid of, the eagle, the lion and the snake,’ he says. ‘In cultures across the world, dragons have the talons of an eagle, the sharp teeth and strong limbs of a lion, plus the scales and tongue of a snake.’ Stephen says conjuring up scary creatures can be a positive response to fear and danger. The kraken was a huge, tentacled creature that, according to legend, would rise from the deep and grab passengers from the decks of ships. It’s possibly a version of the colossal squid, beefed up for dramatic purposes by sailors who encountered it off Norway and Iceland. He is shown the remains of a colossal squid, and its smaller cousin the giant squid, at the Natural History Museum. Mermaids are among folklore’s most enduring creations, and even Christopher Columbus claimed to have spotted three in the Caribbean Seain1493. Manatees, with their bulky bodies and walrus-like faces, may seem an unlikely inspiration for them, but Stephen goes into a river in Florida to see a likeness.

‘Climbing into a wetsuit was like trying to push a marshmallow into a thimble. Bits of me were leaking out in all kinds of places, but eventually I got in there.’

The experience that followed, he says, was magical. ‘I had to do the slowest doggy paddle imaginable, moving at the same speed at which these benevolent creatures slowly ate the grass that grows on the river bed. I was going so carefully, you’ll swear, when you see the film, that it’s all happening in slow motion!’

Thesequencewasofpersonal significance to Stephen. ‘In 2008, I was filming manatees in the Amazon, but I slipped and smashed my arm,’ he says. ‘An aeroplane had to come and take me to hospital as a boat would have taken two days to get me there. I never got to finish my film with the manatees so I felt happy, all these years later, to finally be reunited with them.’

Tim Oglethorpe Fantastic Beasts: A Natural History, tomorrow, 7pm, BBC1.

Stephen Fry with creatures real and imaginary