Flight of fancy runs in family

The internationally renowned veterinary surgeon moved to the Five Valleys at the age of 24 and three years later became one of the youngest veterinary partners in the UK.

Since then he has helped save several species from extinction, worked as an advisor to a Saudi prince, assisted Rolf Harris at the Animal Hospital Roadshow and starred in an ITV television programme - all while keeping on his local practice.

Rachel Pegg spoke to the vet who, at the age of 43, has achieved more than most people do in a lifetime.

NEIL Forbes must be a fantastic after-dinner speaker.

He is never short of anecdotes, from the time he single-handedly saved a royal collection of hunting birds to when he was called upon to play a golden eagle in a primetime TV series.

The Stroud vet has made a spectacular splash in a relatively new branch of science but as a teenager he had to retake his A levels after failing to get the right grades for university.

His story begins just a stone's throw from Stroud.

Neil was born in Bath while his father was working as a civil servant in the Admiralty. Two years later he transferred to London and the family moved to Oxted in Surrey where Neil was brought up.

He went to school at Sherbourne in Dorset and had always wanted to be a vet but after his disappointing A level results was told to find a new ambition. "I didn't do very well," he said. "So I had to re-do them."

The Royal Veterinary College didn't hold out much hope of offering him a place as it was oversubscribed with applicants so Neil applied to do medicine at various London Medical Schools."

Ironically, it is easier to gain a place to train to be a doctor than a vet and Neil was offered a place at Westminster Medical School. However just before starting at Westminster he was offered a place at the Royal

Veterinary College after all. Neil had always loved animals and as a child had enjoyed farm holidays in Wales, Scotland and Ireland.

"I spent a lot of time with animals," he said. "I also liked the idea of being out and about like James Herriot."

This illusion was later shattered when Neil discovered most modern vets work mainly indoors.

But by then his passion for living creatures, especially birds, had become all-consuming which was not surprising given his family history.

Neil's grandfather was a famous falconer as well as working as an entomologist on locust control in the Sudan.

Neil's great uncle Major Robin Ruttledge was renowned for his research with waterfowl in Ireland and in 2002 had a Brent goose in a Wildfowl and Wetlands trust tracking project named after him.

The project hit the national headlines when one of the birds, fitted with a £3,000 transmitter, turned up in an Eskimo's freezer.

At university, Neil carried out two years of pre-clinical theoretical work in London before moving out to the University Field Station in Hertfordshire for his 3rd year.

He published his first paper in a scientific journal while still at the college which, he said, was "very unusual".

When he graduated in 1983 he was awarded a first with distinction in two out of four subjects.

"I wasn't a swot," he said, "but I did work hard and was very pleased to achieve that."

Neil's first job was in Sedbergh situated on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales, working predominately with farm animals.

He said: "It was a typical small village. If they didn't know your business, they made it up."

It was there he met his future wife Claire, who was the daughter of the local vicar.

They now have two daughters, Katie, 14, and Sarah-Jane, 12. In 1984 the couple moved to Stroud to join the well known local practice of Keene & Reed on Lansdown Road.

In 1987 Mr Keene retired, Neil became a partner and the practice moved to the Clockhouse Veterinary Hospital, Wallbridge, where it still is today. Two years later Mr Reed retired due to ill health and Neil took over the reins.

Part of the reason Neil wanted to move to Stroud was because it was just seven miles from Slimbridge Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust, Europe's largest collection of water fowl and 13 miles from its largest collection of birds of prey, the National Bird Centre in Newent.

In 1986 Neil started lecturing and his subsequent career has involved writing books, becoming a European specialist in avian medicine and surgery and working for Saudi Prince Mohammed Bin Bandar Al Saud.

The royal call came at Christmas 1993 when a friend phoned to say the prince's hunting saker falcons had been stricken by a mysterious disease.

The prince wanted Neil's expert advice and he wanted it yesterday. Neil flew out to Almaty in Kazakhstan where the prince was enjoying a hunting trip.

But first he had to make it past Istanbul where his bags of drugs and treatments were viewed very suspiciously. "It was like the film Midnight Express," said Neil.

"I had to explain to the customs official what I was doing with all that white powder and hypodermic needles.

"Luckily after 30 minutes with a book on birds of prey and the internationally accepted word 'doctor' he let me through." There was no time to lose.

Of the prince's 140 falcons, 80 had been taken ill and 10 had died. The collection were conservatively valued at two million pounds.

"It was serious," Neil said.

"Out there birds of prey are somewhere between football and religion.

"This guy would hire a Boeing 747, take out all the seats, and take 15 vehicles and 70 men and a substantial armoury on a hunting trip." Neil began by treating the prince's best bird which was the worst hit.

"But I wasn't ready for the fact that these guys had no idea of first world medicine," he said.

"I gave the first bird an intravenous anaesthetic. They had never seen one before and didn't know what anaesthetics were or what the effect would be.

"I was being watched by the prince's helpers and when the bird keeled over they said, in Arabic, 'He's killed the prince's best bird.' " The implications of such an event were apparent.

"I explained to the guy standing next to me what I had done but the rest were all huddled round," Neil remembered.

"When I later gave it the reversing agent they thought I had brought it back to life.

"They thought it was a miracle. "From then on I could have walked on water."

After some tense moments and lots of hard work, all the birds Neil treated recovered and he was invited back to Saudi Arabia to set up a private veterinary hospital in the prince's palace. Afterwards he returned three or four times a year to care for the prince's collection.

In Saudi, Neil was treated like royalty and put up in the best hotel in the country, though he sometimes had a problem with his payments.

"When I was there the prince treated me like a brother but once I was out of sight I could have been no one," he said.

"Once he tried to give me £55,000 in cash to pay for some equipment, flights and professional fees.

"I asked if I could have a bank transfer instead because I didn't want to carry that much cash on me.

"He was insulted because to him £55,000 was not a lot of money." It was then five months before the transfer was sent.

"As soon as you are gone they forget about you," Neil explained. "They are totally different people to deal with."

Another culture clash came when Neil found himself admiring a beautiful, turquoise-coloured Persian carpet owned by the prince.

He had not realised that in Saudi culture if you admire someone else's possessions it is considered impolite not to give them to you.

The next day a carpet was found for Neil and packaged up to be sent back to England.

"They had to pay a hideous amount of money for excess baggage to get it back," Neil said. "And when it arrived it was bright pink."

Even though at the time the carpet clashed with his newly-decorated living room, Neil gave it pride of place.

Neil's work for the prince finished a few years later when the Royal was killed in an accident.

But his vet's job has also taken him to Russia, South Africa, Asia, Europe, the USA and Australasia.

He has also been an advisor for a number of TV programmes including the vet series Noah's Ark.

In one episode Neil found himself acting the role of an anaesthetised golden eagle that had been hit by shrapnel in Bosnia.

The shell that injured the bird had killed an SAS soldier and the man's friends were trying to save it as a mark of respect.

"They were filming the surgery using the carcass of a dead goose with eagle feathers sticking out from under the drapes," Neil explained.

"It was supposed to be attached to a monitor and in the middle of the story the bird had a respiratory arrest then started breathing again.

"Someone had to go under the table out of camera view to do the breathing so that the monitor bleeped at the right times. "I ended up playing the eagle."

Neil has also taken part in the Animal Hospital Roadshow with Rolf Harris in Slimbridge and his surgery has played home to Vets in Practice.

Life has moved on and now, apart from his clinical work, research projects and writing, Neil is a teacher at Bristol University, where he lectures and holds regular clinics.

This year he plans to scale down his involvement at the Stroud surgery and open a multi-disciplinary specialist staffed referral hospital in Swindon.

He loves his job, he said, because it has given him the chance to experience things he could never have done otherwise and to make his mark on the world.

He said: "I have travelled to places I had never dreamed of going to. "And working in a young science I am in the position to make new discoveries, which is exciting. "It is nice for anyone to think they have made a difference.

"In my case that will be that I have helped to save a number of species facing extinction.

"I have also educated many vets and keepers in the modern effective veterinary care of birds.

"There are so many things that are unknown. Someone has to discover them."