Benjamin Mee had his arm wedged down a storm drain in the middle of a torrential downpour when he heard his mobile ringing.
‘I grabbed it,’ he recalls. ‘It was the American director Cameron Crowe. “I am on Sunset Boulevard,” he said. “It’s good news. Matt Damon has agreed to play you. Got to go. Bye.” ’
Even the drenching rain couldn’t dampen Mee’s enthusiasm; the call meant that plans to film his extraordinary story had taken a leap forward.
Benjamin Mee with Milo and Ella at the family home in Dartmoor Zoological Park Devon
Featured in The Mail on Sunday, it related his Herculean struggle to buy and restore a dilapidated zoo and cope with the loss of his adored 40-year-old wife Katherine from a brain tumour. It was saving the motley group of animals at what is now called Dartmoor Zoological Park that helped him rebuild his own life and those of his two small children.
The film of the same name, co-starring Scarlett Johansson, opens in the UK next month following a hugely successful premiere in the United States in December, where it grossed more than £14 million in its first week. Mee, 46, says he is still struggling to believe it: ‘Matt Damon actually wanted to be me!’
Situated near the village of Sparkwell on the south-west edge of Dartmoor in Devon, the zoo has breathtaking views over the countryside and looks as if it has been taken straight out of a picture book. It houses Siberian tigers, African lions, bears, wolves, a jaguar, racoons, otters, monkeys, meerkats and a host of reptiles.
Mee has to juggle their unending demands with being a single parent to Milo, ten, and Ella, eight. Articulate, fast-talking and dishevelled, he mentions his late wife in almost every sentence. Writing his book was cathartic, as well as lucrative.
‘The story was bought up by 20th Century Fox who paid £30,000 for the rights and agreed to give me £250,000 if it went into production, plus five per cent of the net profit. Since you don’t know until the day filming starts if it is going to go ahead, and any chance of profit is years down the line, my feet stayed firmly on the ground.
Art imitates life with Matt Damon playing Benjamin Mee, above, in the Hollywood movie We Bought A Zoo
‘Eventually I came up with my top choice of Matt Damon because I believed he was thoughtful, self-aware and self-deprecating, and Ben Stiller. I wasn’t worried about their looks, it was the character that was important.
‘Eight months later I got the call that Damon had agreed to do it and later I was told Scarlett Johansson was also on board. I knew she would be great for the film, but Scarlett is SO not Katherine I worried they were doing something really strange.
‘It wasn’t until months later when filming was well under way that I learnt she was an amalgamation of three zoo keepers (one of whom was male!) and not Katherine.
Benjamin had hoped Hollywood star Matt Damon would play him
‘But when I finally did at the American premiere, it wasn’t at all . . . especially after her husband gave me an exceptionally firm handshake,’ he laughs.
Mee was the fourth of five children growing up in East Dulwich, South London.
‘I was the rebellious one, the despair of my parents,’ he says. ‘I was expelled from three schools for disruptive behaviour. I was so bored and wanted to do things my way.’
His life changed at 22 when he read a newspaper article about dolphins and decided he’d love to work with them. So he took two Open University foundation courses in a year, followed by a degree in psychology at University College London and a master’s degree in science communication at Imperial College London. He subsequently worked as a journalist specialising in health and DIY.
He met Katherine, a graphic designer, when he took a temporary office job at a glossy magazine. They married in April 2004 after nine years together. But in 2005, following a spell of migraine and slurred speech, she was found to have a malignant and aggressive form of brain tumour.
‘She was operated on immediately but the surgeon said it would come back,’ he recalls, bleakly.
‘We decided to return from rural France, where we had been living, to be close to my mother. We thought we’d pool our money, and began looking for a large house for us all to live in. We contacted estate agents and a brochure with the details of a dilapidated zoo landed on my doormat.
‘I went to view it because I thought it might give my mother a new lease of life, and offer me the chance to observe animals. It was a desperate place, the animals looked so sad and I thought if we don’t buy it, no one will and what on earth will happen to them?
‘During the negotiating process I had to discover all sorts of skills I never knew existed. I’d previously kept all my receipts in plastic bags, but when Katherine saw me looking at spreadsheets and talking endlessly to accountants and lawyers she knew I was serious about the place. Luckily, she loved the idea.
‘Unfortunately, one of my brothers, who was the executor of my late father’s will, took exception to our plan, and would only deal with the rest of us through lawyers. Everything nearly fell through and we now don’t speak. After a great deal of stress we eventually bought it for £1.1 million and opened it to the public in July 2007, one of the wettest summers I can remember.
‘Katherine, who stayed in France to tidy up our affairs, arrived at the zoo a month after we moved in. She was wonderfully helpful, but the surgeon was right and the cancer returned shortly afterwards.
Scarlett Johansson also features in the film and plays the head zookeeper alongside Matt Damon
‘I said, and it was such a hard conversation, “I hope this is the worst news you will ever hear. I have to tell you Mummy is dying.” Ella, then six, dissolved into tears and cried, “I don’t want Mummy to die.” Milo, who was eight, stiffened and said, “I want to be strong for you, Daddy.”
‘It helped that the zoo keeps everyone busy. On Saturdays, the children usually disappear to the education room and help out. Milo is good at talking about ferrets, hamsters and our South American racoons. They are both good with smaller children who might be frightened about touching animals in the “petting zoo”. If they see Ella or Milo holding a snake they know it is OK.’
Mee, a keen conservationist, took down fences, released animals into the pastures and embarked on a massive renovation project to create a pleasant and interesting environment – not that there is anything soppy about him. He has set up a dissection theatre to process elderly Dartmoor ponies that are used to feed the meat-eating animals. ‘We make a feature of the unit,’ he says. ‘And it’s a bit of a biology lesson for the children, who are fascinated.’
Mee has an extraordinary rapport with animals. ‘These lions,’ he says, pointing to a male and female in their grassy enclosure, ‘are aloof and seriously dangerous, but these,’ he turns round to face two tigers in the adjacent enclosure, ‘are silly pussy cats.
‘Come on Vlad,’ he calls and an enormous, beautifully marked tiger runs to him. To my horror, he then places his hand on the wire fencing and the tiger licks it gently.
The cast of We Bought A Zoo which includes Scarlett Johansson and Elle Fanning. The film is released next month
‘He could have gone on to Dartmoor, killed my children who were in the picnic area or charged to the local village. Instead he went into the tiger enclosure. He rushed at a tiger who smacked him round the head and he spun off like a little toy. He was eventually pacified by a tranquilliser dart gun and taken back to his patch. It was terrifying.’
Originally, the family all lived in a huge, gloomy-looking stone house in the grounds, but now Mee and the children have moved into a two- bedroom cottage next door.
‘Everything has been more traumatic than I expected and I haven’t done so much to the main house,’ he says. ‘My mother’s bedroom and living room have been renovated, but on our side, the ceiling has fallen down in the children’s bedrooms and mine. It is freezing cold and the kids started getting electric shocks off the water on the outside of the house. Losing Katherine still hits me at strange times, for example when I am looking after the children’s hair. I think she would have been pleased with my methods.’
Filming for the movie began in January 2011 and in April, two weeks before it finished, Mee and the family were invited out to the Hollywood set.
‘They had created my whole house and zoo in Los Angeles so they would have access to an endless supply of trained animals. Matt Damon was friendly and even agreed to wear a Dartmoor Zoo T-shirt, despite someone whispering in his ear he shouldn’t. We have a photo of it on our website. But I think I upset Scarlett, who plays head zookeeper Kelly Foster. She was wearing a little tool pouch, which I always carry to do a range of jobs as I walk around the zoo. I asked if there was a proper tool inside, but it was a tiny knife and I told her it wouldn’t be of any use at all. That was it. She didn’t speak to me again.
Katherine with Benjamin, Milo and Ella in 2005 before tragedy struck and below, the Mee family as portrayed in the film
‘In the film, Katherine had died before I bought the zoo, so she is only seen in flashbacks. Milo is called Dylan and is 14, not six, because they wanted some adolescent conflict between father and son. I’ve since had letters saying, “I hope your relationship with your son is better now”! Ella was called Rosie and is a year younger in the film, which she was quite cross about. I spent a lot of time talking it all through with them.’
Mee also had to sort out smart clothes for their walk along the red carpet. ‘I like being a full-on single parent and doing that sort of thing, but I know I am not good at it like their mother was. Ella, who is both a tomboy and very pretty, mainly lives in jeans and hiking boots but I bought her a shimmery dress from Marks & Spencer for the premiere.
‘Then just before we left home I suddenly realised that as we were staying at a luxury hotel, she was going to need clothes just to go down for breakfast.
‘As soon as we dumped our cases in the hotel we went straight out and bought loads of new stuff.
‘The film is a once-in-a-lifetime event and I have to make the most of it. So I have agreed to do some speaking tours in the States later this year and will take the children out of school so they can come with me. Otherwise I would miss them too much. It will be quite lucrative and it’s important to generate income to shore up this place. Hopefully we shall also get lots of visitors here.’
But it is Katherine who remains at the forefront of his mind: ‘I miss her and I do get sad. Yet I know she would have been so pleased with what we have done.’
