‘BIRD FLU’ AND THE MEDIA! 

By 'One Take' Keith

I’ve been quite busy in recent weeks, meeting up with the media and trying to educate them to the fact that our racing pigeons are very, very low risk as far as the pending ‘bird flu’ problem is concerned. I also recently had a phone call from a lady at D.E.F.R.A. and answered a lot of questions on our pigeon imports and sales. I’m always happy to front up to the national media, to tell them what a great hobby pigeon racing is and it’s not all Trafalgar Square, dirty street pigeons under the railway arches and pigeon droppings. It seems to me that most times I see pigeons featured in the national media, whether it be Television, Radio or in the Newspapers, it’s detrimental publicity for our sport. I’ve now appeared on national T.V. four times and the radio five times, and once turned down an appearance on national T.V. because I knew it was going to be a ‘micky take’ and detrimental to pigeon racing. I feel very strongly about this and hate to see anything adverse about pigeon in the national media!

Two local Surrey news papers called me up last week and asked me for a quote on the ‘bird flu’ and our racing pigeons. The result was very satisfactory, with the head line, ‘Bird flu fears “overblown” says …..’ and again I made the point very strongly that our pigeons were very low risk. The reporter at the ‘Esher News & Mail’ did miss-quote me on a couple of points, but on the whole it was pretty good publicity. Maria Williams at the B.B.C. rang me up and asked if I would go on the David Badeil radio show, and talk about racing pigeons and the affect on our sport with the ‘bird flu’ problem. The interview was recorded at my loft in Claygate and it turned out to be a good sensible piece. The B.B.C. always send their reporters down to me on the train, because we are main line from Waterloo and I met a very nice red haired young girl, named Sue Elliott-Nicholls, at Claygate Station. Sue had a nice bubbly personality and has worked for B.B.C. for 18 years, but hastened to tell me she started with them very young. She had worked a lot with the late John Peel on his radio show, ‘Home Truths’, as well as ‘Woman’s Hour’ and ‘Learning Curve’. This busy mother is also an actor and has worked on ‘Eastenders’, ‘Catherine Tate’ and ‘Green Wing’ on B.B.C. television. I must say, it was a great pleasure to meet Sue!

 TEXT & PHOTOS BY KEITH MOTT