Terry Nutkins Had Owned Loch Ness’ Fort Augustus Abbey, Dies
Posted by: Loren Coleman on September 7th, 2012
Terence Paul Nutkins (12 August 1946 – 6 September 2012) was an English naturalist, television presenter and author. He was best known for his television appearances, notably in the UK children’s programs Animal Magic, The Really Wild Show, Brilliant Creatures and Growing Up Wild. The father of eight was being treated for leukaemia when he died on Thursday.
Terry Nutkins, 66, introduced generations of children to the natural world as a wild-haired presenter of wildlife television programs.
In 2000, Nutkins bought Fort Augustus Abbey, on the banks of Loch Ness. His aim was to turn it into a wildlife resort, with treetop restaurants, a maze, tropical wildlife glass house, and traditional Scottish tea room. Disney was said to be interested. But the ambitious venture flopped, and by 2006, Nutkins had “no more businesses, no more partners.” The result was “just pure me, doing what I do best”.
This involved, among other things, a programme called My Life as an Animal, in which “celebrities” tried to live for several days alongside farm and zoo animals. One episode, which had a bosomy former model learning to sleep, eat and communicate like a sheepdog, moved a reviewer to describe the series as “Terry Nutkins’s bonkers show”.
Nutkins himself was not always complimentary about other presenters. He found David Attenborough’s voice “boring” and the late Australian naturalist Steve Irwin responsible for “dreadful, dreadful television”; Bill Oddie he dismissed as “a birdie man”. But he reserved his greatest wrath for glamorous young women who “don’t know their subject so well and are just reading from a script”. According to Nutkins, Charlotte Uhlenbroek, (described by tabloids as a “telly wildlife stunner”), sat around “looking pathetic” after a close encounter with a gorilla which “wouldn’t have bothered me a bit”. His former colleague, Chris Packham, however, he singled out as “a brilliant naturalist who can deliver with an authority which is very gentle”.
Nutkins continued to work despite being diagnosed last year with leukaemia. He lived in Scotland near Skye, amid the landscape with which he had fallen in love during his most unusual boyhood.
Terry Nutkins briefly separated from his wife, Jackie, in 2005, after 26 years of marriage, but they subsequently remarried. She and his eight children survive him.
Nutkins himself was not always complimentary about other presenters. He found David Attenborough’s voice “boring” and the late Australian naturalist Steve Irwin responsible for “dreadful, dreadful television”; Bill Oddie he dismissed as “a birdie man”. But he reserved his greatest wrath for glamorous young women who “don’t know their subject so well and are just reading from a script”. According to Nutkins, Charlotte Uhlenbroek, (described by tabloids as a “telly wildlife stunner”), sat around “looking pathetic” after a close encounter with a gorilla which “wouldn’t have bothered me a bit”. His former colleague, Chris Packham, however, he singled out as “a brilliant naturalist who can deliver with an authority which is very gentle”.
Nutkins continued to work despite being diagnosed last year with leukaemia. He lived in Scotland near Skye, amid the landscape with which he had fallen in love during his most unusual boyhood.
Terry Nutkins briefly separated from his wife, Jackie, in 2005, after 26 years of marriage, but they subsequently remarried. She and his eight children survive him. The Telegraph
At last word, after Nutkins’ Loch Ness project failed, his group sold the abbey to the Raven Group who have been converting the buildings into apartments. This project was due for completion in 2011.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
