Sydney Selwyn - Broadcasts

Broadcasts

Following several brief but popular broadcasts he gave on the dangers of licking postage stamps (particularly in countries that used crude forms of "cow gum" made from bones that could contain a worrying variety of still active diseases) he was consulted by De La Rue and the Walsall Security Printing companies who were early pioneers of self-adhesive stamps. One of the resulting projects he became involved with was the development of a set of self adhesive stamps featuring historic post boxes for Gibraltar.

He appeared a number of times as "a medical expert" on television. For example in the 1970s he was interviewed by Frank Bough on the BBC's then popular "Nationwide" programme shown on prime family-time TV. Selwyn introduced himself on the programme as a microbiologist and bacteriologist with an interest in dermatological matters such as the flora and fauna of our skin. He went on to explain that through his researches he had come to realise most of us were using far too many chemical-based cosmetics and, as a result, disrupting the ecology of our skin. This resulted, he said, in building-up a dependence on more of these otherwise unnecessary cosmetics. He suggested that clean water and small amounts of simple soap were ample and that most of the available cosmetics and personal hygiene products being advertised were not just unnecessary but also potentially harmful especially through habitual over use.

He worked with the BBC on a number of projects which included, for example, "Horizon" documentaries and "Microbes and Men" (1974).