Welsh actor Michael Sheen recalls the moment he made an “extraordinary” discovery about a dark south Wales secret in a new BBC podcast series. The 55-year-old, who recently brought his play Nye to Cardiff ’s Millennium Centre, was relaxing at home in Los Angeles when something caught his eye on Wikipedia. It was about a man named Douglas Gowan, who had discovered dangerously high levels of a toxic chemical escaping a landfill near farmland in south Wales.
Sheen then reached out to Douglas, who by this point was seriously ill and had a matter of months to live. Sheen arranged to meet Douglas to record his final testimony. That testimony features as part of new podcast Buried: The Last Witness which is now available to listen to on BBC Sounds.
READ MORE: Nye review: I went to see Michael Sheen's new play and it showed me just how special the NHS is - and the man behind it READ MORE: Michael Sheen opens about about relationship 'challenges' and why fatherhood makes him feel 'sad' The BBC reports how Douglas, who was working as a consultant for the National Farming Union, was called to look at a badly deformed calf at a farm near Llantrisant, in Rhondda Cynon Taf in 1967. “I see this calf lying on the grass. Three legs, no tail.
Piteous look on its face. No genitalia. It's there in my arms.
And it was a life-changing moment,” he told Sheen. "I wanted to know who was responsible for this, what had caused it. And I wanted those people to be held accountable.
" Douglas' con.
