Dick Van Dyke: Pod of porpoises saved me from death after I fell asleep on my surfboard



Dick Van Dyke has revealed an extraordinary story about how he was saved by porpoises after he drifted out to sea on his surfboard.



Van Dyke, 84, says the porpoises may have saved his life by pushing him back to shore.



He told a U.S. chat show that he used to be a keen surfer, using a 10ft ‘long board’ off Virginia Beach on the U.S. East Coast.

Wacky tale: Dick Van Dyke recounted the story of his lucky escape on the Craig Ferguson show

‘I went out once and fell asleep on that board and I woke up out of sight of land,’ said Van Dyke, the star of Mary Poppins and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.



‘And I looked around and I started paddling with the swells, and I started seeing fins swimming around me. I thought, “I’m dead”.’



‘They turned out to be porpoises. They pushed me all the way to shore – I’m not kidding.’

A sprightly-looking Van Dyke told chat show host Craig Ferguson he ‘doesn’t surf any more’ but did not say when the incident with the porpoises happened.

Lifesaver: Mr Van Dyke said the pod of porpoises pushed him all the way to shore

Nobody knows why porpoises and their close relatives, dolphins, will protect humans but they do the same for their own kind as well as whales, prompting scientists to conclude they may be the only species other than humans that displays altruism.



In 1996, a British tourist, Martin Richardson, was attacked by a shark while swimming with three dolphins off the coast of Egypt in the Gulf of Aqaba. The dolphins surrounded him and kept the shark at bay by slapping the water surface until he could be pulled to safety.



In 2007, surfer Todd Endris was saved by a pod of bottlenose dolphins off Monterey, California, after a great white shark had bitten him three times. They formed a ring around him until he was able to re-mount his board and surf to shore.



Van Dyke was greeted by rapturous applause by Ferguson’s studio audience, joking: ‘Do they remember me?’



Screen icon: Van Dyke (far left) with Julie Andrews (right) in Mary Poppins

The star, who was appearing to promote a DVD edition of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, pointed out that an excerpt of the film in which he was driving his children in the flying car had to be shot in France because ‘the sun never shines in the British Isles’.



Teased by Ferguson about his famously awful Cockney accent as Bert, the chimney sweep in Mary Poppins, the actor replied: ‘The British have been kidding me about my cockney accent for 40 years now.’



He added: ‘You know why? They gave me a [voice] coach who was Irish. Pat O’Malley.’



Van Dyke made his screen debut on the Phil Silvers Show in 1957 before starring in his own TV sitcom in the 1960s.



He is still performing and will be returning to the stage in Los Angeles next month in Step In Time!, a musical memoir of his singing and dancing career.



Once asked how he could still keep performing, he said: ‘The secret to keeping moving is keeping moving.’







