The Times - UK (2022-05-26)

the times | Thursday May 26 2022 2GM 17

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Age catches

up with star

Thirty years after his debut as a

film director bombed at the box

office, Billy Crystal has become the

toast of Broadway by turning Mr

Saturday Night into a musical that

has received five Tony award

nominations. When he first played

the lead character, a past-his-prime

comedian, Crystal spent six hours a

day in make-up to look old enough.

“Now I just show up,” he says.

Despite being 74, Crystal, above,

has been keen to throw himself into

the dance numbers. At the end of

rehearsing one routine, he was

delighted when the health analysis

app on his smart watch buzzed,

assuming it was congratulations on

his energy output. Instead the

watch asked: “Have you fallen?”

The revelation that Downing Street

had a regular booze-up on Friday

afternoons disappointed old Fleet

Street hands. “Boris would never have

organised office drinks at 4pm as a

journalist,” one said. “Half of us

would still have been at lunch.”

paradise found

Andrew Hunter Murray launched

his new novel, The Sanctuary, on

Tuesday and hopes readers will find

the plot of this one to be more

fictional than his first. The Last Day

was published in February 2020

and was an apocalyptic tale about

the world grinding to a halt. “It was

quite an original idea when I

submitted it,” he insisted. “This time

I played it safe and wrote a book

about paradise.”

gorilla tactics

Horrible Histories, the TV series

based on Terry Deary’s books for

children, returns for a special about

the BBC’s centenary. At a Q&A to

promote it, the actress Jessica

Ransom confessed she could hardly

remember any historical dates but

had learnt lots of fun trivia from

being in the series. Her favourite

was that Winston Churchill could

do a good gorilla impression, a

talent remarked on by his nephew

who wrote of him “crouching in the

branches of an oak, baring his teeth

and pounding his chest”. Oh for the

days when prime ministers acted

with such dignity.

With all the forensic rigour of a Met

Police investigator, Adrian

Edmondson has studied the evidence

and worked out what the Covid

regulations really meant. “It appears

you could have held a proper wake

with lots of people during lockdown

if you’d designated a funeral as a

leaving do,” the comedian tweeted.

“Which it sort of technically is.”

broken arm

Russia Today’s UK arm has been

liquidated, if not in the “accidentally

fell out of a window while shaving”

way that Vladimir Putin’s

opponents often are. Some 300

items belonging to the broadcaster

will be sold at auction in

Westminster next week, including

stacks of audio-visual equipment,

six cars and a cupboard full of PG

Tips tea bags. The prime lot for

collectors of political egotism is the

walnut desk behind which Alex

Salmond conducted his fearless

interviews, with the former SNP

leader’s name scrawled across a

frosted-glass front. Starting bid £50.

Should raise enough to buy the

Red Army a plastic fuel tank or

two.

patrick kidd

Some people believe that a humane

way to rescue a fish from its prison — or

tank — is to flush it down the lavatory

and back into its natural habitat.

Those who do could be unwittingly

facilitating the desecration of Britain’s

rivers and lakes, however.

According to a study, the goldfish is a

“high risk” pet that poses a “triple

threat” to biodiversity. Researchers

found that the freshwater fish

has an insatiable appetite and

eats much more than other

comparable fish in British

waters. Goldfish, while

normally considered

placid, are also more

willing to take on rival

species should they get in

the way of their feeding on

tadpoles and smaller fish.

They are able to easily mate

and the female lays up to 1,

eggs at a time for the male to fertilise.

The whole process to hatching can take

just seven days, and a healthy goldfish

can live between ten and 15 years.

The researchers behind the study,

which was published in the journal

NeoBiota, have warned pet owners to

never flush their goldfish down the

lavatory or release it into a pond but

instead ensure its safe return to a local

pet shop or exchange the pet online.

Dr James Dickey, of Queen’s Uni-

versity Belfast and the lead author of

Goldfish-flushing

pet owners panned

Laurence Sleator the study, said that goldfish were high-

risk pets.

“While northern European climates

are often a barrier to non-native species

surviving in the wild, goldfish are

known to be tolerant to such conditions

and could pose a real threat to native

biodiversity in rivers and lakes, eating

up the resources that other species de-

pend on,” he told The Guardian.

He suggested that pet shops should

stock alternative species that did not

pose such an invasive risk.

“Limiting the availability

of potentially impactful

[species, such as goldfish]

alongside better educa-

tion of pet owners is a so-

lution to preventing

damaging invaders

establishing in the

future,” he added.

In recent years, large

goldfish have been found in

America. In 2020, a goldfish

weighing 9lb (4kg) was found by offi-

cials conducting tests on waters at a

lake in North Carolina. Last year the

authorities in Minnesota appealed to

aquarium owners to stop releasing their

pet fish into waterways after some grew

to more than 1ft long.

Officials in Burnsville, a city 15 miles

south of Minneapolis, said that the

goldfish were wreaking havoc on native

species of fish and contributing to poor

water quality by “mucking up bottom

sediments and uprooting plants”.

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