Mike Thomas, who co-owned Newquay Zoo from 1993 to 2003 and, according to Benjamin Mee, increased its visitation from 40,000 to 250,000 a year in that time, has written a book about his time as owner: Cornish books, books about Cornwall, art, gardening, food and surfing by Alison Hodge Publishers I wonder if I'll be able to get a copy down here in the Antipodes...
Furthermore, he is a major contributor - really hands-on. Mike is a man with vision and stature and very clear, very good ideas. He's an intelligent man and a good thinker - in fact he'd make a great Welshman! I admire his direct, pragmatic approach to business. He has no airs and graces, which means he can communicate just as well with those on the floor as with those right at the top of the zoo industry. The proof of the pudding is his track record, which is a good one: in the past ten years he has increased Newquay Zoo's market capital by an impressive margin. For all these reasons, he's the chap I most admire in the zoo business at the moment.
I'm sure you could get Mike Thomas's book in the Antipodes. I got my copy through Amazon, so I'm sure you could too. However, you might want to save your money. Mike Thomas may be good at many things. However, he's no author. I was really looking forward to it but I was disappointed. It is poorly written. I might just have overlooked that if it didn't contain so many zoological errors. He freqently interjects the sentence "I own a zoo" or similar into the text. Perhaps a zoo owner should be better clued up on zoology. I don't know Mike Thomas. I know nothing about him and I've never met him. Consequently, I had no opinion on the man. However, my opinion of him plummeted towards the end of the book. He talks about the foot and mouth epidemic and how the zoo had to close for a number of weeks. Because the zoo had no income he asked his staff to go on half pay. While his business was closed because of this national crisis and his staff were on half pay he and his wife went on holiday! That aside, it isn't a good read. If you want to read it I'd advise you to see if your local library has a copy rather than spend your money.
How you can say you have no opinion,when you then go and say that your opinion of him,plummted towards the book says that you do have an opinion,but one based just on what you have seen in the book,and not from knowing anything apart from what is written in the book!! Just to defend Mike Thomas here,he bought a small council run collection of little note even in the UK,and turned it into one of the best small collections in the UK,to the point that despite its size it is in my top 15 collections in this country.As for him going off on his holidays when foot and mouth,outbreak happened ever thought that the holiday was booked long before it happened,I know if I had booked a holiday and it happened I would still have gone knowing the zoo was in good hands of some excellent and very caring staff.
Perhaps I didn't express myself as well as I might have. I don't tend to make sure my English is too exact on internet fora. Before I read that part I had no opinion on Mike Thomas per se. I did have an opinion on his writing skills. I wasn't too impressed with the zoological mistakes he makes in the book. Other than that I cannot say hey I love Mike Tomas or that I hate the guy. I've no opinion on him as a teacher, manufacturer of spiral stair cases, managing director of a seal sanctuary, or managing director of a zoo. I have no illusions that he turned around a failing zoo. I suspect that Roger Martin and his staff also had something to do with that too. What I do know is that I've read the book. I based what I said on what Mr Thomas wrote. May be I'm a lone voice but if I worked in an animal-based establishment in a region which was one of the hardest hit by the foot and mouth endemic and my employer asked me to take a cut in my pay by 50% and then went off on a last-minute holiday I would not have been happy. Despite the fact that zoo staff are not paid huge salaries I would love to work in a zoo. I think I'd be only too happy to work at Newquay Zoo. But, if the place was closed, and I had to take a 50% pay cut but still pay my mortgage, council tax, utilities, food, etc. to keep a roof over my head and my family's head I would think the boss should be there with us not swanning off on holiday. Something my reduced pay wouldn't allow me to afford for my wife and children.
I worked with Mike for a short while - about six months. He was a curious fellow, in many ways. He had (has) many admirable qualities, but he was also very difficult to work with. I don't think he would ever claim to have been a great zoologist. His attitude to animals was very much that of an enthusiastic amateur. Personally, I don't believe this is really good enough for a zoo director - but there are many others, in the UK at least, who share this shortcoming. But to judge him on his animal knowledge would be to judge him on an area in which he claimed little or no expertise. As far as I know, Roger - who struck me always as a very decent chap - was only ever a sleeping partner. While Mike did make some very good appointments, the one thing he did have was an aesthetic vision of how the zoo might look. For all of his faults, I think it really was his doing that Newquay was 'turned around'. I suspect that the staff would have been delighted to have Mike out of the way - it would have given them the time to get on with their jobs. And while he could be accused of many things, laziness was never one of them. I don't think he ever got rich on the back of the zoo, either. I doubt whether anyone would have begrudged him his time away. As for the book: probably not the most historically reliable of texts, but a reasonable piece of enjoyable pap. Certainly there are many worse such books out there!
That's an interesting post sooty mangabey. I have to confess I wouldn't have got that impression of him from the book. It was clear he was very hands on and didn't hide away in his office. It sounds like the staff may have preferred him to be a little less involved in day-to-day operations. Maybe they looked forward to all his holidays. It was hard to gauge Roger Martin's involvement. I've read two books by another zoo director. It would be hard to discern from those books that there was another very active co-director.
I just finished reading Mike Thomas's book and while there were several zoological errors (was it actually a brown bear or Asiatic black bear at the zoo?) I found that for the most part it was quite enjoyable with a decidely British sense of humour floating through it. Mike Thomas seemed to not suffer fools easily, he was most definitely an amateur zoologist, he had zero opinion of birds ("seen one and you've seen them all"), and he came across as a hands-on, hard-working, dedicated zoo owner. I quite enjoyed reading about his days as both a teacher and owner of the Seal Sanctuary, and the honesty when it came to the budget and finances at Newquay Zoo was enlightening. Overall it was a quick and breezy recap of an amateur zoologist's life, as well as a snapshot of the history of a tiny British zoo. I would recommend the book as it was entertaining, but for those looking for a thought-provoking, in-depth look at the world of zoos then prepare to be dismayed. For 10 years Mike Thomas was an owner of a zoo, and "not many can say that". There are parallels between his book and Benjamin Mee's, and it seems that throughout Great Britain there are a large number of zoo owners (or perhaps were in the past) who in truth do not have a scientific, zoology-based background. It seems as if as long as an individual was prepared to work hard slogging away in the trenches then they could run a zoo as long as they had a few pounds in the bank and an earnest hope for the future.
