Book of Useless Information - Softcover

Trained as a surveyor, Nick Gordon started his photography career as a News cameraman for the BBC, eventually obtaining his first wildlife commission. His first film was Survival Anglia's Giant Otter, followed by Tiwai: Island of the Apes, and Tarantula! During his filming he has consistently broken new ground, for example, with his scientific advisor discovering a new breed of marmoset and a 'lost tribe' and filming the giant tarantula for the first time in the wild. Creatures of the Magic Water was shortlisted for best Single Documentary in the 1997 Royal Television Society Awards. He has won awards including a First Prize at the International Nature and Environmental Film Festival in France in 1996. Nick spends most of the year in the heart of the Amazon rainforest, his base a hut only accessible by canoe. He has two daughters. This is his first book.

'Here at last is the book so many who have enjoyed natural history television programmes have been waiting for, told by one of the master practitioners' - Sir David Attenborough 'Imagine sitting down to supper and being entertained by the extraordinary adventure stories of a man who has experienced first-hand the sort of phenomena that even Hollywood has difficulty dreaming up. Nick Gordon's first book... has that effect: it is a candid, amusing and sometimes horrifying account of more than ten years spent in the Amazonian forests as a wildlife film maker... The accounts are so frank and illuminating that they will carry you to the very heart of the experience... Whether you are a naturalist, photographer, anthropologist, avid television viewer or adventurer (in spirit or in practice), this is a book for you. And for anyone who has ever fancied themselves a wildlife film maker, it is a must.' - New Scientist 'Mr Gordon quite literally lives in a hut in the Amazonian rainforest. Snorting dodgy ground-up seeds with the local shaman; building an artificial tarantula habitat in order to film the furry monsters making spidery love or killing and eating a two-foot snake - all in a day's work for Gordon, a wildlife cameraman. One to curl up on the sofa with.' - The Guardian 'One of the great adventurers and story-tellers among wildlife filmmakers' - Survival Anglia