Why we’re going wild for David
Born in Leicester, in England, where his father was principal of a college that later became the city’s university, Attenborough studied geology and zoology at Cambridge, and anthropology at the London School of Economics. His brother, Richard, is the celebrated film director.
The BBC inaugurated the world’s first television service in 1936, but transmissions ceased at the outbreak of World War Two. Attenborough joined the BBC in 1952, soon after the service had been restored. Four years later, he organised then Prime Minister Anthony Eden’s Suez crisis broadcast, following which he was invited to Checkers for a tennis weekend. At the request of Buckingham Palace, he supervised the Queen’s first television appearance. Rising steadily through the ranks, he became controller of BBC2 in 1964. Kenneth Clarke’s ground-breaking Civilisation programmes, on the history of art, and Jacob Bronowski’s The Ascent of Man, were produced during his tenure. But Attenborough disliked management, and, in 1972, resigned.
I met him twice. He is an easy, amusing conversationalist. He has a lively, occasionally wicked, sense of humour that you don’t see on air. Thinking I might faze one of the world’s most-travelled people, I asked if he had visited Skellig Michael; but, of course, he had. He loves classical and ethnic music. His 1950’s Song Hunter series included performances by Seamus Ennis and the ‘singing traveller’, Margaret Barry. Margaret had no fixed abode, so the BBC sent telegrams to Garda stations in the west of Ireland to track her down. Before her broadcast, she removed her false teeth. In his autobiography, Attenborough says “the sight of this strange, gaunt woman, with few visible teeth, accompanying herself with a jangling out-of-tune banjo was not ... the highlight of that week’s television.”
Attenborough was the right man in the right place at the right time. At the start of his career, communications technology was primitive. Valve-driven television cameras were cumbersome and garish lighting was necessary. Film cameras could be taken into the field, but they had clockwork motors and only short sequences could be shot. Their noise frightened the creatures being filmed and the sound had to be recorded separately. In the era before videotape, television programmes could not be pre-recorded and everything had to be done live.
For Attenborough’s first nature series, Zoo Quest, animals were taken from their enclosures at London Zoo and brought to the studio, where they were discussed under the glare of the lights. Attenborough suggested that he would travel to remote regions of the world, with a keeper from the zoo, and capture animals. The proceedings would be filmed and the animals would be guests on the show when they returned to London. In those days, travel was precarious and dangerous, but Attenborough chose the most inaccessible and remote regions of South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia for his visits. Many species were filmed for the first time.
His career would coincide with extraordinary advances in communications technology, which he used to the full. The invention of the transistor enabled compact cameras to be made. The 405-line TV standard gave way to the higher-definition 625 lines. Colour arrived on the scene in 1976. Zoom lenses, and the ability to record both sound and vision together, transformed wildlife film-making. Tiny cameras could be attached to birds and robot cameras could wander among the great herds of Africa.
The iconic Life on Earth programmes appeared in 1979; 500m people watched them. Landmark series, devoted to birds, mammals creepy-crawlies and plants, followed over the next three decades. His most recent work, Life in Cold Blood, is currently being broadcast.
Attenborough’s wife of 47 years died in 1997. “The focus of my life had gone..”, he declared. “I could not have led the life I had were it not for her unwavering support. Now I was lost.” At 81, he seems to have no intention of retiring. “What would I be doing,” he remarked, “sitting alone all day in Richmond.”
The Mooney Show, Radio 1, Good Friday, 3 to 4.30pm.
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