Like everyone else right now, I have been under a good deal of stress in the last few months, so I have been trying to take advantage of life’s small pleasures wherever I can. One of these has been trying to find the least stressful audiobooks to listen to. And for that, I really couldn’t go past The Panther In My Kitchen, due to it being written and narrated by Brian Blessed
Sorry, that should read BRIAN BLESSED!
As I noted in my review of his previous book, Absolute Pandemonium, you would think that by the time you got through an audiobook read by this man, your ears would have dropped off. But that’s not true! Brian Blessed is a very engaging narrator who takes a very laid back, conversational approach to his books, which makes you feel like he’s in the room with you, cheerfully recalling delightful anecdotes from his life’s adventures. This makes for very easy listening, which is exactly what we need.
Brian Blessed is a huge animal lover, and these stories mostly focus on the animals he met throughout his life and how his relationships have changed with them. These run from your regular house pets, such as cat and dogs, to the slightly more exotic—giant koi carp, big cats and orangutans. No matter where he is or what he’s doing, he seems to seek out their company. And this snowballs as he gets older: as a boy he had his faithful cat friend, but as soon as he has the money and the means, this blows out to a full-on menargerie.
All of his stories about these animals are regaled to us in a very loving manner. It is clear that Brian has been fond of them for the entirety of his life. This doesn’t mean that his relationship with them hasn’t changed as he’s gotten older though. As a child, it’s clear he had the same sort of youthful fascination that many of them seem to have when we were the same age. And for much of his younger adult years, he continued to be excited by their presence. But it was his wife, Hildegard, who pointed out that his relationship with them was not much more evolved than a young boy playing Tarzan, and it would do him well to try and appreciate their wants and needs. This lead to a shift in his attitudes towards keeping more exotic pets and the roles that zoos play in conservation. Hildegard, by the way, sounds like an utter saint, and she gets a very much deserved increase in focus in the latter part of the book.
It’s not all fun and games though, For every story about childhood cats, eccentric dogs, amorous female gorillas—and yes, the titular panther in the kitchen—there are a number of sadder stories about the degree of cruelty he has witnessed. The book is in fact capped by them: the opening anecdote starts with the story of Bodger the dog, who was brought to the Blessed household in a pitiful state after being subject to what sounds like torture. And near the end of the book, we get the story of Juan the young orangutan, a cautionary tales that llustrates just how poorly zoos were equipped to deal with such animals, and how we have to strive to be better and more compassionate.
But despite playing tug-rope with your emotions, listening to The Panther In My Kitchen was an overall uplifting experience that served to buoy my mood. If someone gave Brian Blessed a radio show, I would make it my priority to tune in every week. It’s just delightful.
For Bingo, this is going under I Wish. Beacuse I do wish I could hang out for a day with the man. But I also wish I could have been a fly on the wall the day Brian and his dad were renovating Clarance House and came across all the rats…
EDIT: that’s a bingo on the bottom for me I think