Interview: Attenborough at 90

In six decades of broadcasting, Sir David Attenborough has become a national treasure. And, as he prepares to turn 90, he's not slowing down. Grant Woodward reports.
Sir David Attenborough: "The truthful answer is that I feel unbelievably lucky." David Parry/PA WireSir David Attenborough: "The truthful answer is that I feel unbelievably lucky." David Parry/PA Wire
Sir David Attenborough: "The truthful answer is that I feel unbelievably lucky." David Parry/PA Wire

IT waS December 1952, and an ancient fish called the Coelacanth had suddenly become headline news. In fact, it had sparked a full-blown international incident. France was at loggerheads with South Africa, claiming that in the dash to grab the fish South Africa had violated her territorial rights.

Working as a young television producer at the BBC’s Alexandra Palace studios, David Attenborough found himself being summoned by his boss. “You were educated as a biologist and you have been here for nearly two months now,” the 26-year-old was told. “So put on a programme next week to explain what it’s all about. Fifteen minutes should do it.”

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So began a presenting career which has seen Attenborough become a fixture on our screens, his passion for the natural world and affable personality informing and enchanting us for more than six decades.

Sir David Attenborough with an armadillo from 'Attenborough's Animals' in 1963.Sir David Attenborough with an armadillo from 'Attenborough's Animals' in 1963.
Sir David Attenborough with an armadillo from 'Attenborough's Animals' in 1963.

This Sunday, he celebrates his 90th birthday. To mark the occasion, BBC One will look back at his life and career in a one-hour special called Attenborough At 90.

His response to joining the ranks of the nation’s nonegenarians? Gratitude to still be in one piece. “The truthful answer is that I feel unbelievably lucky,” he says. “I have friends, contemporaries, relatives, people who are my age, who can’t walk about. I am unbelievably fortunate.”

Born in 1926 into a well-off family with two brothers, John and Richard, Attenborough was inspired by the Leicestershire countryside that surrounded him. At home he scoured nature books and discovered they had a profound effect on him.

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“One very few people know about now was by Ernest Thompson Seton, a ranger in the Canadian prairie,” he recalls. “He wrote about the animals he knew and he was a good artist and drew the little footprints down the side margins. I adored those books. Wept over them too.

Sir David Attenborough with an armadillo from 'Attenborough's Animals' in 1963.Sir David Attenborough with an armadillo from 'Attenborough's Animals' in 1963.
Sir David Attenborough with an armadillo from 'Attenborough's Animals' in 1963.

“My father was a scholar, an academic and an expert on Anglo-Saxons, but he also understood about education and he said to each of his three sons, ‘What is it you want to do?’ and I said, ‘I want to do something with animals and fossils’. He said there are ways of finding out about that. You can go to the museum and there are some good books.”

By the age of seven he had already created his very own “museum” of bird eggs, old stamps and ancient fossils. It was around this time that his father introduced him to young academic Jacquetta Hawkes. She was so impressed by his “museum” that she sent him a box full of fossils, dried seahorses and other exotic artefacts. It confirmed in the young David’s mind that he wanted to be a naturalist.

He studied natural sciences at Cambridge, but was reluctant to become an academic as he didn’t like the idea of being stuck in labs and lecture theatres. He joined the Royal Navy instead, with hopes of seeing the world, but was posted to an aircraft carrier in the Firth of Forth and left after three years, entering the world of publishing with an “extremely boring job” editing children’s science textbooks.

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It was accident rather than design that took him to television. “I was working in publishing and saw an advertisement that the BBC were looking for a radio producer,” he says. “I applied and got a polite refusal, but about a fortnight afterwards, I got another letter from someone else in the BBC saying, ‘We’re starting this new thing called television, would you like to apply?’

Attenborough’s association with natural history programmes began properly when he produced and presented the three-part series Animal Patterns. The rather stuffy studio-bound show featured animals from London Zoo, with the naturalist Julian Huxley discussing their use of camouflage.

During filming, Attenborough met Jack Lester, the curator of the zoo’s reptile house, and they decided to make a series about an animal-collecting expedition. But even then there was no suggestion that Attenborough should front it – until fate intervented.

“I had no intention of becoming a presenter and the only reason I did was the man from the zoo, Jack Lester, became very ill. So I appeared by accident really.”

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In the early 1960s, he resigned from the permanent staff of the BBC to study for a postgraduate degree in social anthropology, juggling his study with further filming. However, he accepted an invitation to return as controller of BBC Two before he could finish the degree. His tenure was a successful one and he was soon made director of programmes across both BBC channels.

But he still yearned to return to film-making full-time, specifically to work on his idea for a programme looking at the story of evolution. He knew that there was little chance of him presenting it if he remained in a management post, making the decision relatively straightforward.

“I’d paid off the mortgage and the children had left school and been educated and what was I going to do? What I knew I enjoyed most was making programmes, so why not go back to making programmes? When I was running BBC Two, we started a new kind of documentary, which was a 13-part one-hour programme, but I knew the subject you could make a mind-blowing series about would be the history of life on earth and I thought, ‘By golly, that’s a thing I’d like to do’. As soon as I resigned, I suggested to the BBC this is something they might consider.”

Life on Earth, first screened in 1979 and the most ambitious series the BBC had ever produced, was a huge success and set the template for what followed. Attenborough narrated every episode of Wildlife on One, which ran for 253 episodes between 1977 and 2005. At its peak, it drew a weekly audience of 10 million.

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Countless captivating series have followed. He has let himself be attacked by military ants in Africa, abseiled down a rainforest tree his late 60s and is the oldest person to set foot on the North Pole. No prima donna, he travels economy class with his film crew, only accepting offers for airline upgrades if it extends to them as well.

Currently working on a follow-up to 2006’s award-winning Planet Earth, he shows no sign of slowing down either. “Making programmes is just huge fun,” he says. “Not only do I go to exciting places and do exciting things, you do it with pals, with people who are a joy to work with and making programmes is very much a team thing. I feel constantly embarrassed about the amount of credit I get for the amount of work that many, many people are doing.”

“Attenborough is an intelligent young man... but he should not be used as an interviewer again because his teeth are too big.” So read a BBC memo after that first television appearance 64 years ago. Fortunately for us, its recipient didn’t listen, or we would have been denied a true national treasure.