MIKE RICHARDSON Edited transcript of a recording of Mike Richardson interviewed by Chris Eldon Lee on the 1st May 2012. BAS Archives AD6/24/1/163. Transcribed by Andy Smith, 10th December 2017. Part One [Part 1 0:00:00] Lee: This is Mike Richardson, interviewed by Chris Eldon Lee, on the 1st of May 2012. Mike Richardson, Part 1. Richardson: Mike Richardson. Date of birth is 12/2/49. Born in Hanover in Germany actually. [Part 1 0:00:17] Lee: Oh right. Why was that? Richardson: Well because my father, at that time, was in the Army, so actually you are born in a sort of enclave of Britain which is the British Military Hospital in Hanover. [Part 1 0:00:29] Lee: So he was there just after the war? Richardson: Yes. He was actually in the Army all his working life. We were very rarely in the UK. We trundled round between Singapore, Malaya, Northern Ireland, Germany, then back to Germany and so on. [Part 1 0:00:44] Lee: Did your mother have a profession or was she a professional Army wife? Richardson: She was a professional mother because she had six of them. We were a very ordered family so there was girl, boy, girl, boy, girl, boy. I was Number 2 but there was quite a lot of us. [Part 1 0:00:55] Lee: Well the next question is probably more complicated than I expected, which is about your education. What sort of education did you have? Richardson: Because of the Army upbringing, I think I had been to about seven schools in so many years, or in fact less than that. So I got eventually packed off to a prep school, a choral prep school, in Worcestershire, which doesn’t exist now and I was very fond of that part of the world. And then I went to a public school in Sussex, Ardingly and from there went to Durham. I didn’t really want to go to Durham at that time because I was grouse beating just after school, which is a great way of getting fit. I got two offers came in, one a day after the other, from St Andrews and Durham. I wasn’t at home but my father was and he promptly rang up Durham and said ‘He will be there in three weeks’ time.’ So my idea of taking a gap year out was sacrificed. [Part 1 0:01:58] Lee: What was your father’s name? Richardson: George Richardson. 1 [Part 1 0:02:01] Lee: Was he that kind of man, then, to make decisions for other people? Richardson: When he thought I was probably just going to gallivant around for a year, yes. [Part 1 0:02:09] Lee: In your best interests? Richardson: Absolutely. [Part 1 0:02:12] Lee: I guess you were boarding at some of these schools, were you? Richardson: Yes. I boarded from the age of about eight at this prep school and then also at public school. [Part 1 0:02:21] Lee: So a bunk in a bunkhouse in the Antarctic held no fears? Richardson: Not really. It’s a sort of extension of a Boy Scouts existence in some ways, and of course BAS at that time wholly male. [Part 1 0:02:35] Lee: Yes. Where did the interest in biology spring from? Richardson: The funny thing was: I had never actually had any doubt as to what I wanted to do from about the age of seven, so it was a sort of a bit of a Gerald Durrell type existence as a kid. I had so many animals, it was almost positively embarrassing, particularly if you are at boarding school. [Part 1 0:03:03] Lee: You didn’t take them with you? Richardson: Yes. I used to go backwards and forwards between what was then … We were living in Harrogate. So I was going backwards and forwards between Harrogate and Sussex and I use to cram all these animals into old ex-Army ammunition boxes. At one stage I had like forty hamsters and about six ferrets and a few other things. I remember sitting on a train and we were just coming into Leeds. We hadn’t gone very far when somebody said ‘Oh look, a ferret.’ I thought ‘Oh My God.’ The ferret was eating its way out of the box and by the time I had got to London, I had strapped a huge great thick biology tome over the top of this box and it was coming through the top of that as well. Basically I always wanted to do biology. It wasn’t a question really; I just instinctively fell into it. [Part 1 0:03:50] Lee: So you did go to Durham? Richardson: I went to Durham to do zoology, yes. [Part 1 0:03:53] Lee: Did that convince you that that was the career path you wanted to take? Richardson: Yes, but initially, after three very enjoyable years at Durham, I had two PhDs lined up – one on the population energetics of water voles in Sussex and the other on the population dynamics of lesser white toothed shrews in the Channel 2 Islands.– sounds really fascinating, at Southampton. Then suddenly I thought ‘Hang on. I have just done three years at university. I am not sure I really want to do another three.’ It was at that point, I think probably just wandering round the careers office which I didn’t visit very often, I suddenly came across the British Antarctic Survey as a potential job. And I applied to BAS, again as a biologist, wanting to work on seals and seabirds. Really actually I wanted to work on mammals. It wasn’t going to be quite like that. [Part 1 0:05:02] Lee: Where did your interest in the Antarctic come from? What was your first memory of knowing a place called the Antarctic existed? Richardson: Funnily enough, it really wasn’t an interest in the Antarctic and it wasn’t actually really a great interest in BAS. It was an interest derived from the fact that I realised I didn’t want another three years at university. I suddenly saw BAS. I wanted to work on mammals and OK, it was in the Antarctic. Actually what really happened was having been interviewed, and I thought for this job possibly on seals – if it wasn’t seals, it was going to be seabirds – I turned up at Monks Wood, which was then where the Zoology Section of BAS was based, just near Huntingdon, because at that time BAS was spread all over the UK. I had only graduated, I think, on the Friday or the Saturday; so this was the Monday morning, and the first two questions I got directed at me when I turned up: one was ‘How much marine biology do you know?’ to which I said ‘Well none really because Durham doesn’t have a marine lab. It was snaffled years ago when Newcastle University was hived off from Durham, so I don’t know anything about marine biology.’ ‘Oh well don’t worry. You will soon pick it up’ they said. And the second question was ‘How good a swimmer are you?’ I said ‘Well actually not very good at all.’ ‘Oh don’t worry about that. We will send you on a diving course down at Swanage and you will soon pick that up as well.’ So the idea of working on seals and seabirds had gone out of the window and I was suddenly apparently going to be press-ganged into being a marine biologist. [Part 1 0:06:47] Lee: Let’s just go back to that interview in London. What do you recall of it? Richardson: The headquarters of BAS at that time were in this funny little terraced house – I don’t know if it still exists – just round the back from Victoria station 1. So I turned up there. I can’t remember precisely who was on the interview board, but Bill Sloman was (Head of Personnel) and the chairman of the board was actually Dick Laws who was then the Head of Life Sciences in BAS. It was quite funny really because I was sitting there and I wasn’t really well versed in interview techniques, one could say, and sufficiently not versed in interview techniques that the first question that the chairman of the board directed to me … I looked at him blankly because I hadn’t even heard it because just over his shoulder, on the window sill, I was watching these sparrows mating and I was actually much more engrossed in watching the sparrows mating than in the interview. I think this must have gone down quite well actually with Dick, who of course was quite a good field biologist. Somehow or other, I got the job. Of course just after the interview, I then tottered off to Eland House, I think it was called or Eland Place or something like that, which was the old ODA offices just by Victoria station, and there was this really strange 1 30 Gillingham Street , London SW1V 1HU, now occupied by Shepherds Bookbinders. 3 character. I thought he was really rather humorous actually. I think he was an ex Lieutenant Colonel Surgeon, very colonial almost and very colonial looking who did the medical. It was such a wonderful bizarre medical; I have never come across … Anyway I got the job.