The Garden Tiger
From the collection of
A Pub With No Beer
- Armagh
- 1984-10
The Garden Tiger (Good Evening Ulster)
An unusual pet alarms the neighbours.
Eamonn Holmes reports for the Good Evening Ulster local news programme on the story of Samson the Royal Bengal tiger. A Northern Ireland MP had recently tried to get the Secretary of State to outlaw the tiger which was living in a cage beside a mobile home but that request had been turned down.
The owners were a Mr and Mrs Bailey who also lived with their young daughter, two Alsatian dogs and a cat. They had recently also owned two monkeys who had perished when Mrs Bailey tried to treat their fleas with fly spray. A Barbery ape they also owned had apparently been swapped for the tiger through a local safari park after the ape had become too troublesome.
Mrs Bailey admits that she would be nervous herself in her neighbours' shoes but she claims that the fact the tiger has been taken for walks and not attacked anyone shows that it's safe! She also points out that they have to keep the tiger in a good strong cage. Eamonn asks if the cage behind them qualifies as such and she admits that it doesn't but that they are going to sort that out going forward.
There is also an interview with Marion Palmer, a local resident who is leading the campaign to have the tiger removed. The Causeway Safari Park comment through Eamonn that they wouldn't advice people to keep tigers as pets but that it should be safe as long as it has been bottle-reared.
Good Evening Ulster was the weekday tea-time local news round-up for Ulster Television throughout much of the 1980s and helped to launch the careers of household names such as Gloria Hunniford and Eamonn Holmes.
Tags
A Walk on the Weird Side
The extraordinary, the absurd and the downright weird combine in this collection of reports from UTV’s nightly Good Evening Ulster news programme.
Despite the often bleak aspect of local news in Northern Ireland during the decades relating to The Troubles, ordinary - and sometimes extraordinary - life continued on. This series of some of the more off-the-wall reports from the UTV news archives shows the citizens of Northern Ireland engaging in unusual schemes, fundraisers, pastimes and humorous events.
From Earl Bird attempting to set a new world record for non-stop yodelling to a nuclear bunker disco, from a pub with no beer to a canine snooker referee, you’ll find this collection full to the brim with the odd, the eccentric and the full-on weird.
23 videos in this collection
1
A Pub With No Beer
2
Window Cleaning World Record
3
The Garden Tiger
4
Bay City Rollers Fans
5
Model Car World Record Attempt
6
Buried Alive World Record Part 1
7
Buried Alive World Record Part 2
8
Cow Pat Throwing
9
There's No Business like Gnomes Business
10
The Dog Rufferee
11
There are Leprechauns in Those There Hills!
12
To Heaven and Beyond! A Con Brio Rock Odyssey
13
Snooker Marathon
14
Hula Hoop Champion
15
Death Dive
16
Come away from the Fairy RIng, O Builders!
17
Whiskey Galore!
18
The Spirit of Radio
19
Laughter is the Best Medicine
20
White Christmas
21
Guinness World Record Breaking Weekend
22
Clown Around at the Community Circus
23