SWANSONG FOR ANIMAL MAGIC WE ADORED

As zoo that made Johnny Morris a childhood favourite closes...

For a generation of TV viewers who grew up enjoying Animal Magic on BBC1, the announcement this week that Bristol Zoo is to close in September marks the poignant end to an era. The gardens in Clifton are where presenter Johnny Morris filmed most of his animal dialogues. This real-life Doctor Dolittle talked to the zoo’s residents and, in a delirious assortment of silly voices, made them seem to talk back to him.

The apes were cockney, the llamas and camels crooned in an exotic patois, the big cats purred and the reptiles hissed — and it was always hilariously entertaining.

More than that, though, Johnny’s affectionate voices taught children to see the animals not as mere exhibits, but as individuals with their own personalities.

Like millions who adored the show, I learned more about wild animals as a child by laughing at the wise-cracking chimps and snooty snakes than any textbook could teach me.

Despite his natural and fearless rapport with all sorts of animals, Johnny had no training as a handler. Born in 1916, he managed a farm before World War II and later ran a pub in Wiltshire — where a BBC radio producer overheard him entertaining regulars with his voices.

He made his first TV appearance in 1953 as the Chestnut Man, standing with a barrow of hot chestnuts like a street vendor and telling tall tales for children. Animal Magic, which began in 1962, was his own idea: he played the Keeper, in a peaked hat, doing his rounds at the zoo and chatting with his furry mates.

The outdoor sequences were shot without sound. Johnny knew the fluffy microphones on their long booms could alarm the animals, so all the voices were added back at the studio.

After 21 years, Animal Magic fell foul of po-faced BBC apparatchiks who felt Johnny ‘anthropomorphised’ too much — that is, he made the animals seem too human. But that was, of course, the whole point!

When he died, aged 82 in 1999, he was buried with his Keeper’s cap. But his voices live on — as they do in these glorious archive photos, with the Mail imagining the chummy chatter of his animal co-stars . . .