Wild new podcast Hooked on Freddie follows the 1990 tabloid frenzy about an animal rights activist who formed a special bond with a dolphin – only to be put on trial for it
When someone mentions the year 1990, you might think of the last days of Margaret Thatcher, The Satanic Verses, poll tax, recession and the IRA. Or, you just might think of a man in the north-east of England getting arrested for masturbating a dolphin.
The man in question was the animal rights campaigner Alan Cooper; one of the witnesses to the alleged incident was the owner of the Flamingo Land dolphinarium, Peter Bloom; the site was the North Sea. The whole intriguing story has now been turned into a podcast series by journalist Becky Milligan who, it turns out, actually swam with the very same wild bottlenose dolphin, named Freddie, back in 1990.
