After a successful and varied career in academia and the media, former Guild President John Paling (BSc Zoology, 1961; PhD Zoology, 1964) returned to Birmingham last year for the first time since the 1960s. He met with current members of the Guild and reminisced to Old Joe.
I started at Birmingham with about 12 other Zoology students. There was no environmental sciences or life sciences at that time; we had Botany, Fungus and Zoology groups. I then stayed on for a PhD under Professor Jack Llewellyn, studying the most obscure thing possible: parasites living on the gills of fish.
Life as a student was a great experience. I remember sitting in the coffee room in the Guild in my first few days and realising how wonderful it was to be free and be able to do my own thing. The whole world had opened up.
In my first year I was in private accommodation in Warley and used to either cycle on to campus or take a bus. My last two years as an undergraduate were in Chancellor’s Hall on Augustus Road, where I was President. Life in halls was great – living with your best friends and socialising.
We used to walk down from the hall around the lake to go to the pub. If there was a cause for celebration, like a birthday, you’d get thrown in the lake. Everyone thought it was a great joke.
My research required that I regularly had 12 fresh trout sent to me. I like to think my recurring gift of those trout for evening meals contributed to many votes in my election campaign to be President of the Student Union.
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Life in Chancellor's Hall
Life as a student was a great experience. I remember sitting in the coffee room in the Guild in my first few days and realising how wonderful it was to be free and be able to do my own thing. The whole world had opened up.
In my first year I was in private accommodation in Warley and used to either cycle on to campus or take a bus. My last two years as an undergraduate were in Chancellor’s Hall on Augustus Road, where I was President. Life in halls was great – living with your best friends and socialising.
We used to walk down from the hall around the lake to go to the pub. If there was a cause for celebration, like a birthday, you’d get thrown in the lake. Everyone thought it was a great joke.
My research required that I regularly had 12 fresh trout sent to me. I like to think my recurring gift of those trout for evening meals contributed to many votes in my election campaign to be President of the Student Union.
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Running for election
I ran for the Guild Presidency for the fun of it. I had been President of Chancellor’s Hall and served on the catering committee, and the Guild seemed a logical step up. I was a member of the Debating Society; everyone who was a president of the Union happened to be a good debater, otherwise you didn't get the votes.
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Dressing up
I had a chain of office as President with a big coat of arms on the front. Whenever you went to a formal dinner, say at some other University, you wore it. Now, it's hidden away in a safe and is worn by the Guild representative at graduation ceremonies.
This is a picture of me wearing the chain of office with Vice-President Val Tompkins at a Guild Ball. In those days before digital media, all social life was more formal, even including special events in the Guild. Val and I were very much a team for the year.
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Queen Elizabeth II visits campus, 1963
In May 1963 Queen Elizabeth visited campus and I will always remember a University jazz band attempting to play the national anthem while she was there. They placed themselves in the room above the main entrance to the Guild and tried to play as the Queen was leaving. She was left unsure whether to stop dutifully for her national anthem or just carry on – both embarrassing and slightly amusing to witness.
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Fundraising for Rag Week
I have always viewed the photos with me falling in the road while collecting for Rag Week as an appropriate souvenir of my crazy student days.
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Honorary life membership of the Guild
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Return to campus
In late 2024 John returned to the University for the first time since the 1960s to "tick off an item on my bucket list." He met with current Guild President Syed Sadath (pictured) for a tour of the building and campus.
One of my best buddies was John Rigott (BSc Zoology, 1961; PhD Medicine, 1964). He was from Yorkshire, and his parents had a little bakery in a town called Hemsworth.
In vacation time I would go and stay with him and can remember waking up to the smell of fresh bread. I’d go down to the shop to help out selling “scufflers” (flat-bread baked at the bottom of an oven) to customers.
After my PhD I managed to get a job at Oxford as a lecturer. I had a very eventful first day. I was told that Oxford’s regulations had never actually recognised Birmingham as a University so they couldn’t officially recognise my degrees. In order to employ me, they had to give me a degree. That was in my first few minutes of the job.
Later that day, I joined colleagues for a cup of tea and sat next to a guy who became one of my closest buddies, Peter Parks. We started to chat and agreed that biology was so interesting it shouldn't be limited to university academics; someone should make films about the subject. We resolved there and then to make wildlife films together.
That became our career for 20 years, flying around the world, producing films for the BBC and winning multiple Emmys in the USA. We did a film on the Queen's Gardens that is still available on YouTube and filmed long before Buckingham Palace was open to the public. I would go on to do paid lectures across America, which has now been my home for 44 years.
I would advise current students to find what you like, do it better than anyone else can and let the consequences fall where they may, because the world will come to you. I've lived on a magic carpet of opportunity you could never have predicted, just by finding what I enjoyed, doing it and then becoming a leader in all sorts of odd things.