Self Medication

Interview with
Dave Spikey Part 2

(questions below continued from Part 1)

Would you share with us the events on you recent trips to Vietnam and China?

Yeah. It’s a great thing this charity work. It’s very fulfilling. It’s a privildge to do it. On this one occasion I was doing work for Animals Asia. I did two big shows and I sent all the money to China. I got an email saying you know this money’s enough to free a couple of Bears from bile farming, which is a form of torture…. They said can we call one (Bear) Spikey and one after your missus after Kay. So I went yeah of course you can…. So they said we’re opening a new sanctuary in Vietnam If you could do the honours it would be brilliant. So we flew to Vietnam and back and then to China and back. We did seven flights in six days. I went to see the work they’re doing at this new sanctuary. Vietnam have banned bile farming but they’re not enforcing it. So these bears are still being kept in these cafes now.

People can go in for a cup of tea and then go I’ll have some of that bile off that bear there. So they just stick a bloody big needle in it’s liver. In China’s it is worse as they’re kept in cages with big catheters in their livers so they can’t move for twenty five years. Imagine that, your lifetime stuck in one position with a needle stuck in your liver. The trip was very, very  upsetting in parts and… it made you very angry. But it was very uplifting as well seeing the work that people are doing. There was a lot of hope there for the future. You can’t go marching into China a country with it’s traditions and it’s history and start telling them that you should being doing stuff…. So you’ve just got to say these are the alternatives, synthetic or herbal you don’t need to be doing this to these poor animals. And hopefully over the years it will drip feed in.

I understand on one occasion in Vietnam you filmed in one of the bear cafes. You got footage of a bear being operated on for tourists and sent it to the Vietnamese government?

I’d got a camera crew with me. I couldn’t get some one from over here. So I asked them if they had someone from Hong Kong to come over. So I sort of directed it. It was like a video diary I suppose. So we’d been to this café and then we went somewhere else to look at these other poor bears. And then on the way back they said have you decided which bears you want to called after yourselves? I had and they said what about you Kay? She said I can’t decide, there was one that looked mentally scared you know, a really odd looking little bear. She said ‘It was at that Black Bear Café shall we just call back and have another look at it?’ So obviously they weren’t expecting us because we’d been and done the filming and gone. So we pulled in just as this massive Korean tourist coach was pulling away. The panic the mayhem as they ran around so obviously as it’s illegal now. And they were running screaming and shouting. So we started running with the camera it was like something you’d see off the telly. And they were running and running back to the bottom of the cages.

Anyway we found this bear completely unconscious in it’s cage. It was one of the bears that was supposed to be being freed. And when we questioned them they just kept saying no there’s nothing wrong with it. Jill Robinson who runs the organization, she’s really brilliant and full on, barged her way into this outhouse and we found all the needles and all the fresh bile just on the counter. They’d not had time to clean up. So we filmed all this and then sent it to the Vietnamese government and said this needs shutting down this place because they’re still doing it and they just sent a letter back eventually saying that’s not enough evidence you could have planted all that. You’ve got to film them doing it. I think we’re going to have to try and do that though one way or another.  Is there any possibility that film will be released as a short documentary?

Yes there is. I’m in talks with Granada to do a new series called ‘Inside out’ I think. It’s gonna be a half hour programme on local people and their work and I’ve certainly got half of one of those programmes.

China's track record on animals welfare and human rights is bad. I’m not slagging off the whole country but the regime is generally accepted as a totalitarian regime. Do you think the international community should have let them have the Olympic Games? 

I don’t personally no. There are two ways of looking at it.  Yes you do that and then that gives you a platform on which to address and highlight their record on human rights and animal rights…I wouldn’t, I would have said you can’t have it until you’ve cleaned your act up. Have you seen what they’re doing now? Bulldozing people and making them homeless just to make the Olympic games!

What does the future hold for Dave Spikey?

Erm I dunno really. This sounds a bit twee I’ve done everything I want to do really. I can’t believe I’m doing this after working for thirty years in a hospital. Every day is like Christmas Day. I’ve got the tour until the end of May and that’s all I want to do really at the moment. I’d love to direct like we’ve talked about before. I think the two projects I’ve got at the moment are a bit to ambitious for me to direct, but I’d love to get into something in the future where I could get into directing films and stuff. I’ve got a commision that is almost definite to write a play; which is obviously a different discipline all together. It is the Octagon which is a fantastic theatre who have asked me, I went for a meeting last week and they’ve actually commissioned me to write a play for them.

Will you direct it?

Oh no I couldn’t direct it in theatre I’m going to watch him (the director) do it though. I’m gonna go and help (he laughs). I’m gonna help him on the periphery and just keep an eye on it. It’s an idea I’ve had in my head for a while but it’s not fully formed yet. I think it’ll be about eighteen months to two years before that’s ready. I need to develop it with actors in a theatre environment. So I’m hoping that’ll be a success and that’s it really.

For more about Dave Spikey click here