Sir David Attenborough

25/06/2009

'If I died tomorrow I would simply say - thank you very much'

Helena Drakakis

Sir David Attenborough has spent his life peering into the planet's most intimate moments as they play out in the lives of animals and plants, yet he is decidedly timid when talking about himself.

"I'm not very introspective. I tend to spend more time looking at what's out there than what's in here," he says, placing a hand on his chest.
We meet in a room above the Kensington branch of Waterstone's. In an hour, Attenborough will be signing copies of his autobiography for the queue of people already snaking out of the door.

"We did 300 in the last place," he says, a touch exasperated. Perhaps he wants to catch his breath?

"Yes, yes," he shoos me like a bluebottle, "come on, just go ahead." At 83, Attenborough is surprisingly sprightly. Clad in cornflour blue and beige, he speaks softly and passionately, though at times this is punctuated with a no-nonsense incredulity ("Good God! Mine is a job like any other. You just get on with it!")

I sense he finds humans a tad bothersome. It is little wonder. Attenborough's childhood, set ,in Leicester between WWI and WWII, reads like a chapter from Arthur Ransome's Swallows And Amazons.

"Yes, yes, I collected lots of things, fossils, snakes and salamanders and fish, and so on. I don't think  I was exceptional," he says.

"Children are still fascinated by beetles and slugs, so I don't think it's changed." Most adults, too, recognise Attenborough's breathy narration as synonymous with all manner of mammals, insects, birds, fish and vegetation that, for decades, he has brought to our screens.

However, his debut as the face of BBC natural history programming came about by accident when, in 1954, prior to the first transmission of the Zoo Quest series, presenter Jack Lester was taken ill and a 28-year-old David Attenborough was forced to step in. "There was no training. I just did it in the way you would if someone gave you a camera and said, 'Go and tell a story'," he says, baulking at the suggestion his unique delivery was in any way cultivated.

"Anybody sitting yards from a gorilla will talk in a soft, measured voice. It's a perfectly natural way of doing it."

The world has undoubtedly changed in the half-century Attenborough has been broadcasting, but his days in television would have been numbered had he not kept pace with technology.

A far cry from the early days of clockwork cameras and film stock that was simply too sensitive for rainforests, his 2006 series Planet Earth, which garnered eight million viewers, was the first to broadcast in high definition. "In every series I've done, there has been a new possibility because of a technological advance, so that has been hugely helpful," he nods enthusiastically.

He was controller of BBC Two when the public first tuned in to colour transmissions in 1967. From Life On Earth in 1979 to last year's Life In Cold Blood, he has been an unquestionable pioneer.

Today, he carries an iPod overflowing with classical music and he's reading a scientific tome on palaeontology ordered from Amazon.com.
However, some advancement has brought about one monumental headache. Us pesky humans are living longer, there is a population explosion in the developing world and this means an increasing pressure on the natural habitat of the species Attenborough cherishes. He stresses he's "just a biologist" who has a "great affection for animals".

"If you see species being destroyed and diminished and persecuted, it's an obligation to say something about it," he says. "It isn't what you want to do."

"What you want to do is luxuriate in the delight and pleasure of being with animals, but your conscience tells you that you can't sit by and keep quiet," he adds.

He's on thorny territory, but if there's one thing Attenborough is not, it's apocalyptic.

There needs to be a limit on population, he says, but one that occurs naturally. "In societies that have a reasonable standard of living, that have female literacy, that allow birth control and have no religious prohibition, the birth rate has fallen," he explains. "The solution is to allow people to take their own decisions."

Embedded in Attenborough is the desire to both enthral and educate - the ethos upon which public service broadcasting was built. He's had offers to switch to commercial TV, he admits, but it would have meant making a different kind of programme. I ask if he means programmes with less integrity.

"Well, that's just a prissy way of saying I was enjoying what I was doing," he says. He leans back, his eyebrows approaching lift-off when I tentatively wonder if he's ever searched for himself through his travels. "I might spend my time looking at a thermometer," he considers, "but I've never spent time thinking, 'Why am I so miserable while I'm looking at the thermometer?'"

He does fears pain, though, he says quietly. The kind of pain experienced when land crabs are nibbling at his ankles? "That wasn't painful," he says solemnly.

The pain of losing someone he loves? "Yes," he replies. I suspect he is thinking about his wife Jane, who died 12 years ago of a sudden brain haemorrhage.

He has described himself as simply feeling"lost" without her. Attenborough is big at heart but bijou on emotion. But life goes on, and one thing is certain: retirement isn't on the octogenarian's mind. He's scripted the forthcoming Radio 4 series David Attenborough's Life Stories and he's working on the natural history series The Frozen Planet, which has included a trip to the Antarctic. There's nowhere he'd want to see one last time if he died tomorrow, he says humbly.

"I've never been one to say that I have this huge ambition. If I did die tomorrow, I would simply want to say, 'Thank you very much'.'"

The revised and updated version of David Attenborough's Life On Air (BBC Books) is out now