THE Swindon Advertiser ran an interview with one of the town’s most famous sons 47 years ago today.

Dr Desmond Morris, a descendant of Adver founder William, was the most famous zoologist in Britain.

Born in Purton and raised in Swindon, he had made his name as a presenter of popular TV programmes including Zoo Time.

In 1967 he had published The Naked Ape, a bestselling book about human behaviour. Over the ensuing decades there would be many more bestsellers and programmes.

We caught up with him at a plush London home with a Rolls Royce parked outside. He also had a home in Malta.

Our article began: “A small boy once built his own canoe and watched the wildlife in what is now Queen’s Park, Swindon, from the middle of the lake there.

“He spent hours in what was then a derelict quarry owned by his family.”

Dr Morris told us: “You could hardly credit that there was this extraordinary place in the middle of an industrial town.

“I became an observer there rather than a hunter. If none of this had happened, I wonder what I would have done.

“One of the great things I got from Wiltshire was the space. I still go back there when I can – I think it must be one of the most beautiful places in the world.”

The author revealed that he kept a copy of a book by his ancestor, William Morris, called Swindon 50 years ago, and added: “I suppose he influenced me in a way.

“We had all his old instruments at home, really good Victorian instruments. I don’t know whether I shall return to Wiltshire, though. Universities have become important to me now.”

Other subjects discussed included the criticism levelled at The Naked Ape over its alleged anti-Christian standpoint.

“In the biological sense,” said Dr Morris, “immortality is a reality because every species passes on the reproductive process.

“That is the only kind of immortality I am prepared to buy. I have no way of establishing if I am going to live on a cloud with people with long white robes.

“But for me to start talking about these things is as out of place as if a poet or a priest were to talk to me about the physiology of the central nervous system.”

Dr Morris was no stranger to criticism of his work, having first encountered it in the Swindon Advertiser more than 20 years before, when he exhibited his paintings at the Arts Centre.

His surrealist pieces have come to be acclaimed, but were too much for some locals in 1948.

A typical writer to our letters page, a Mr Gough from Headlands Grove, said: “I wonder how many art lovers in Swindon will be fooled and annoyed by being invited to see an exhibition of paintings such as now mock us from the walls of the corridor leading to the Borough Free Library.”