Our weekly round-up of outlandish and interesting information collected from the corners of the charity sector.
Born Free goes ape
Yes, Diary’s kicked proceedings off with a fairly cheap chimp pun. Queue the groans and rolling of eyes. It seemed like the right thing to do though at the time; certainly better than something to do with ‘bananas’.
As you will no doubt be well aware of by now, London Zoo was bought to a veritable standstill yesterday when a 29-stone male silverback gorilla escaped from its den and made a loping bid for freedom. Since then all manner of sources – both cited and anonymous, eye-witness and not – have come forward to have their say.
Diary’s personal favourite quote of the whole saga comes from the BBC, who spoke to 33-year-old Hamburg native Jonathan Mall. Mall was attending a conference at the zoo when the primate slipped free his surly bonds of slavery and initiated a complete lockdown of the zoo.
“I was kind of scared, to be honest,” Mall is quoted as saying. “Because we were in a really closed space where everything is green and beautiful but there could be a gorilla hiding behind every bush”.
Mall was locked-down in the zoo’s bird enclosure, just in case you were wondering. This column’s not been to London Zoo’s aviary recently, but can’t help but wonder how luscious and green its bushes must be if they could completely obscure the brooding, dark shape of a full-grown gorilla?
Another eyewitness reportedly described the incident as “like being in Jurassic Park”. If the experience was anything like the most recent Jurassic Park film, it must have been underwhelming then… zing!
The gorilla, who has been identified as 18-year-old Kumbuka, only made it as far as a secure keeper area before being thoroughly tranquilized. The great gorilla escape artist was only out of his area for an hour and, according to the zoo, has now been happily re-united with his family.
From out of the mist has now come the Born Free Foundation – a sort of animal welfare/anti-zoo charity – who are now calling upon the Zoos Experts Committee to give the London Zoo a good, ol’ fashioned… gorilla grilling.
"While we are relieved that this incident apparently ended without injury to visitors or to the gorilla, it is yet another startling reminder of the risks associated with maintaining dangerous wild animals in captivity," said Chris Draper, the foundation's associate director for animal welfare and care.
This column is very relieved that Kumbuka didn’t go the way of well-known mammal-martyr Harambe – the Cincinnati-based ape who was unfortunately executed when a toddler fell into his enclosure earlier this year. R.I.P!
Diary’s relief turned to outright amusement when BBC Breakfast accidentally ran footage of Kumbuka while trailing to its big interview with SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon this morning. It’s becoming increasingly hard to see why Scotland seems so keen to be free of the United Kingdom, isn’t it…
Mistake, or deliberate. You decide! @NicolaSturgeon @BBCBreakfast pic.twitter.com/ntoOiasIQ6
— John Smith (@johnnyTR70) October 14, 2016
A most unlikely bromance?
Earlier this week an illustrious group of trustees and fundraisers gathered for the launch of the IoF’s new guide Fundraising for Dummies Trustees, with the highlight being the joint appearance of William Shawcross, chair of the Charity Commission, and Bernard Jenkin MP, and while the audience may have been expecting some thoughtful commentary or advice from two senior figures in public life they were instead witness to what can only be described as the most awkward of bromances.
It took them fully five minutes of incredibly British ‘after you sirs’ to agree who was going to speak first, and when Shawcross did he opened with a monologue about how wonderful and “marvellous” Jenkin was, leaving the audience feeling like they’d intruded on a private moment.
It turns out that Jenkin’s committee is no longer responsible for scrutiny of the Charity Commission – as part of the summer’s machinery of government change scrutiny of the Commission has moved to the Culture Committee, currently without a chair. It’s fair to say Shawcross was none too pleased about this decision. Could it be that he’s concerned about the level of scrutiny a fresh panel of MPs might apply to the Commission? No-one has expressed any concerns about the governance of the Commission for at least a week.
So traumatised was he by the cruel upheaval that Shawcross was a little fuzzy on actual Commission issues, such as how the regulator is encouraging more diversity on trustee boards or when Trustees Week is (first week of November, William, always the first week of November).
Fortunately the Commission’s director of communications was in the audience to answer all those pesky, technical questions.
King Harold's stuck in Transit
Today marks the 950th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings – that seismic set-to between the scions of Anglo-Saxon England and Norman France which forever changed the trajectory of this damp, windswept island nation.
While English Heritage has already begun feathering its nest – selling over 16,000 tickets for the staged re-enactment which will take place on Saturday – the Guardian has managed to winkle out a pretty delicious little detail about the life of Harold Godwinson’s impersonator: he drives a transit van.
“On the eve of the 950th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings, King Harold was packing his Transit van for the journey from Shropshire to meet his fate.”
The chap’s name is Kendall Kinrade and, if his piece in the Guardian is anything to go by, he absolutely can’t wait to take one in the eye… so to speak, despite the ongoing debate between historians about whether or not the real life King Harold did die of an eye arrowing.
“You can only carry historical accuracy so far,” Kinrade said. “I don’t think the audience would ever forgive me if I didn’t take the arrow in the eye.”
Diary’s not a betting sort of column but, if betting wasn’t suspended anyway, it’d probably put its #firstfiver on the pesky Norman’s winning the re-enactment – for about the 950th time in a row.
I need a hero (or maybe a distributor)
Sir Stuart Etherington, chief executive of NCVO, stood up to explain leadership to assorted charity people at the launch of an Open University event earlier this week. Etherington was in good form, a mix of avuncular and excoriating, addressing charities’ lack of courage, need for a moral compass, inaction on diversity, and a whole host of other issues.
He also took a quick look at the ideas of heroic leadership (do everything yourself and share power with no one) and distributive leadership (get everyone else to do anything, but keep the money yourself).
So apparently heroic leadership sounds like what you want to be doing but is actually not that great, whereas distributive leadership sounds really dull but is actually a good idea.
(Not that you should listen uncritically to Diary on management theory; you shouldn’t put a column on a pedestal.)
Anyway, Etherington said, a heroic leader often does so to compensate for certain other shortcomings. Perhaps he’s a bit short, or quite stout, or losing his hair.
For those who aren’t familiar with our fearless leader, let’s just say that Etherington is known in charity circles as Big Stu for a reason, and it isn’t his great height or the size of his quiff.
Anyway, Etherington went on, despite fitting the stereotype of the heroic leader, he feels he is much more in tune with the distributive stereotype.
“I’ve been known to distribute quite a lot of work,” he said. “Particularly if I’m tired.”
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