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HEADLINE: A cetacean sensation
BYLINE: Polly Samson
BODY:
Dolphin-worship is reaching evangelical proportions. Take, for instance,
the preview screening of bit-part actor Kim Kindersley's new film,
The Dolphin's Gift, about the wild Irish dolphin known to millions
as Fungi, held last Wednesday at Bafta.
The filmstar dolphin, who swam into Dingle harbour seven years ago,
is currently pestered by as many as 5,000 tourists a day and is
already to the County of Kerry what the Wailing Wall is to Jerusalem.
After the film, heirs and airheads sipped Black Velvet while spouting
on about their transcendental underwater experiences; their faces
lit by strange gleams as they talked about achieving the ''Dingle
Tingle'' (yuk), as though swimming with a wild dolphin were to be
equated with the latest in designer-drug highs. It was interesting
that although the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), the
pressure group that fights international dolphin slaughter currently
put at 500,000 a year was present, few of the dolphin-fanciers seemed
to take their cetacean adoration seriously enough to so much as
pick up a copy of their latest report.
''I have only swum with one dolphin, in Hawaii,'' said the actor
Charlie Sheen, who talked of the ''magic and energy'' flowing in
the water when he did so. Swimming with the Irish dolphin was a
magical experience for the model Julie Anne Rhodes, too,
and just about everyone in Kim's film seemed to claim a very special
relationship with the dolphin.
In fact, there are dolphin wars going on in Dingle, in which people
practically wish drowning upon others who boast of a closer relationship
with the dolphin than their own. Fanatics bore on and on about how
they were the ones who first discovered the dolphin. Others play
musical instruments to him, throw anorexics and depressives overboard
to be cured by him, and generally regard the hapless creature as
the Messiah returned in waterproof clothing.
Kim Kindersley learned about the Dingle Dolhin from his masseuse.
''I met him on a beautiful misty morning'' the dolphin, that is
''He rose out of the water and I was hooked,'' he sighs, no less
mystically affected than anyone else. And, like everyone else, he
felt the need to kiss 'n' tell. ''It was a wonderful, pure experience.
I just had to make the film.''
Meanwhile, the Dingle Dolphin, as a result of that highly-contagious
disease, word of mouth, has to contend with more visitors than the
Dalai Lama. Allan Thornton, of the EIA, worries that unless the
traffic of visitors is controlled, the dolphin will be seriously
injured. This beautiful film will only add to the crowds. As one
local publican stated, ''That dolphin, he makes the idle rich.''
LOAD-DATE: November 27, 1991
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