ANDOVER
wildlife artist Pip McGarry will be starring in his own television show
starting on Sunday, bringing together animals, celebrities and painting.
Pip, who is artist in residence at Marwell Zoo, presented the idea to Meridian and the result is A Brush With The Wild, which will be shown on Sundays at prime-time 5.30pm.
It is a major coup for Pip, whose career as" a professional painter has really taken off during the last five years.
But it was a nerve-jangling wait while the decision was being made.
He said: "I didn't hear anything all day.
"So the next day I rang them, thinking that it had been canned, and amazingly they said they were going to offer me a seven-part programme."
By sheer coincidence Meridian programmers were discussing his and other ideas shortly after Rolf Harris's popular BBC 1 show in which celebrities have portraits of themselves painted.
In fact Pip, who once represented Andover at boxing and football, had no idea about Rolfs show, although he believes it may have helped Meridian in its decision-making process.
A Brush With The Wild is almost a mirror image of Rolf's show because it gets celebrities to paint animals.
"What we do is introduce the celebrity to the animal at Marwell and then they have a workshop with me during which they paint the animal - and it all has to be done in one day," said Pip.
So far Lesley Joseph (Birds of Feather) has painted a giraffe, comedian Helen Lederer rhinos, and Nerys Hughes (The Liver Birds) has painted a gazelle.
Pip says that when he first meets the celebrity he tends to hold them in awe.
"You see them on TV - they're celebrities," he said. "But as I teach them to paint they become human beings, even friends by the end of the day. The transition is quite amazing."
With Anneka Rice as co-presenter, each show features footage of the wild animal in its natural habitat before returning to Marwell for the workshop.
Then each painting will be displayed during the summer exhibition at Marwell and the proceeds from the sales of their work will go towards one of the zoo's overseas conservation projects.
The first three programmes will be broadcast on 4,11 and 18 April. The next three will be recorded in July and the final show will bring everything up to date and focus on the exhibition.