'I'm not an animal lover'


When I place my Dictaphone on the table between us, Sir David Attenborough lets out a great guffaw. "I thought that was your phone!" He insists he is quite useless with gadgets. "Oh absolutely. My daughter Susie's much better than me. But then my granddaughter's better than her." Does that make him feel old? "But I am old!" He rocks with laughter. "I am, I am, I am." Slowly the mirth subsides. "I am old," he repeats quietly.

This helplessness would feel more convincing were a TV of monumental sophistication not staring at us from the other side of the room. Attenborough has lived in this house in Richmond, south-west London, for almost half a century, and it has the unstyled calm of an old family home. The shiny ensemble in the corner, however, would flatter a City boy's luxury loft. Its owner may have turned 80 this year, but I am fairly sure he knows how to operate it.

Tomorrow Planet Earth goes out on BBC1, and it's likely this ninth major series will only reconfirm the octogenarian's primacy in contemporary culture. It is a remarkable media anomaly. Attenborough's work is of almost arcane specialisation, patience and integrity, satisfying none of the conventional demands of a multi-channel, digital medium. Nobody else has tried to make programmes like his for years, nor would they dare. And yet, his programmes consistently outperform almost everything else the BBC produces, watched by an estimated 1 billion viewers worldwide.

Inviting Attenborough to explore this anomaly can be prickly, though. For one thing, he comes from a generation that regards talking about oneself - let alone analysing one's success - as infra dig. In truth, talking for long about anything other than wildlife seems faintly onerous. He will hold forth quite cheerfully on the shortcomings of modern life, but nostalgia appears to be strictly prohibited. If he fears he's being drawn into anything that could sound like Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells, the air suddenly chills and he cuts off. There's an almost boyish determination to find innovation thrilling - new cameras are "quite extraordinary", Mark Thompson's mastery of the BBC's digital future is "marvellous", and so on - which feels entirely uncontrived. But at other moments his politeness can be so withering, you wonder why he doesn't just come out and speak his mind.

When I ask, for example, about Germaine Greer's verdict on Steve Irwin's death that "the animal world had finally taken its revenge", at first he remarks, "Well, it's a fairly brutal thing to say. And you don't want to, you know, de mortuis nil nisi bonum [speak ill of the dead]. But on the other hand, the point about Steve Irwin is that he was an adventurer and what he told were adventure stories. I mean, he traded on - well, he used danger as a way of attracting people to his story.

"Irwin wasn't talking about natural selection or population dynamics. He was talking about [mimicking an Australian accent], 'Well, what am I doing here then?' " The tone is mild and airy, but the compliment is devastating. "And you know, that's fine. You know, we've all done that. I mean, when I was a kid I was all for going out there and wrestling with anteaters and so on."

The conditions that brought an Attenborough, rather than an Irwin, on to our screens would be difficult to replicate today. He joined the BBC in 1952 as a Cambridge natural sciences graduate with no television experience, or even a telly. His first screen role only came about by accident when the reptiles curator at London Zoo fell ill, and Attenborough - then a junior producer - stepped in as presenter. The air of unworldly, amateurish enthusiasm stretches back to a childhood spent cycling around rural Rutland filling jam jars with insects. One of three sons to a university principal, he enjoyed the freedoms and disciplines of a middle-class, old-fashioned English upbringing.

"Well, it is unarguable that childhood is changing," he concedes warily, when I mention a recent theory that modern childhood has become "toxic". "And there are some who'd argue it's changing for the worse." Why is he reluctant to agree? "Well, I think it's very easy to feel that every change is for the worse once you're over 60," he says testily. Does it require a conscious effort to resist the feeling?

"Oh yes. Sure." He looks cross, then suddenly relaxes. "But fortunately, the areas in which I operate are eternal. They don't change. A cuckoo lays its egg in a sparrow's nest. That's the same all the time."

Climate change has made his world less eternal than he'd once assumed. He declared himself convinced of global warming only five years ago, and one of the rare professional criticisms levelled at him has been a slowness to acknowledge the facts, and reluctance to campaign for action. Does the charge needle him?

"Well, you should be very, very careful how you use your profile," he counters earnestly. "I mean, I'm not a climate scientist. I don't understand about atmospheric chemistry. But the awful thing is that people will say, Oh yes, we know him, he's off the telly. And he's just said something about carbon dioxide in the atmosphere - so he must know. Well, if you're going to say that, you really had better be sure you're right. And using notoriety from the screen in order to bolster some argument of which you have no first-hand knowledge is very dangerous.

"That's why I have never done a commercial. Never. Ever. Because if I have any quality on the screen, it's that people believe that what I say is true. Or at least, they certainly believe that I believe it's true. Now if you do a commercial, it's palpable that you're saying this is the best margarine because somebody has paid you! That's all. And once it's known that give him enough money and he'll say anything, you're dead as a doorknob. You've lost everything. So it's self-interest, really. It's moral, of course. But it's also self-interest. Because it would be a disaster.

"The BBC used to have rules about these things - and very strongly so," he continues, finally allowing himself an unguarded lament. "I mean, everybody thinks: Ah, auntie BBC, you know, toffee-nosed old thing. But now people who have got celebrity from the BBC by talking about antiques or something suddenly pop up talking about a particular French polish." Even now, his tone is not so much irritated as amiably amazed.

Only once does all trace of optimism abandon him, as he recalls a recent visit to the States. "I was really upset by it," he says simply. "It all seems lies. You turn on the television, and it all seems lies. And the newspapers are all lies. And what people told you were all lies. I mean socially. Of course, there are a lot of very nice people. But the whole system - the advertisements that hit you all the time, telling you that some hotel has got something or other - and you know it's a lie. And then even the whole business of the government, the politics now. The people I met - well, they are obviously my sort of people, but I couldn't find one of them who'd voted for Bush. So it feels as if the whole government is based on a fraud."

Did he feel that way about America 20 years ago? "No. Even five years ago I didn't feel it. It's dreadful, really."

Just mention a salamander, though, and his whole bearing lights up again with delight. "Your boyfriend had one?" he exclaims. "Really? What kind? Black with yellow spots on?" In a flash, he's more engaged than at any other moment. "I gave my eldest son a salamander when he was nine, and to his astonishment - and equally to mine - this thing started producing babies out of its vent. Riveting! Ab-so-lute-ly riveting. I couldn't believe my eyes."

It is hardly surprising that his career as a television executive didn't last. In the early 60s he became a BBC suit, and as the first controller of BBC2 was hugely successful. But when rumours reached him in 1973 that he might be made director general - "Well, it simply wasn't for me," and he fled back to programme-making. He was married for 47 years, with a son and a daughter, until his wife Jane died in 1997, since when Susie has taken care of the family home. His brother, Lord Richard Attenborough, lives around the corner. But he is not much of a socialiser and although he suspects the series he is currently working on, about reptiles, may be his last, the defining focus of his life remains animals.

"But I'm not an animal lover," he says emphatically. His face scrunches up in disdain. "Animal lover means sentiment; a cloying, anthropomorphising sentiment. I don't love earth worms or spiders. They're rivetingly interesting and they give me huge intellectual pleasure. And aesthetic pleasure, I suppose. But that's a different thing altogether."

That's not the same as loving them? "No. It's the word 'love' I don't like. The phrase 'animal lover' - well, it just grates on me! That's why I'm irritated when people use it on me. They say, Oh, you're an animal lover!" He glowers. "I say, I am NOT an animal lover."

Why does he think the public has always loved him so loyally? A television career spanning more than half a century is not unprecedented; but one so long with no spells in the wilderness must be unique.

"Well, this is going to sound funny, but actually people don't turn on my programmes to see me," he suggests. "They turn on to see the animals. They watch because they know I don't stand between them and the animals they want to watch. We're back to Steve Irwin again, aren't we? If I watch a Steve Irwin programme it's because I want to see Steve Irwin. That's not what I do."

But when I ask if he found Irwin's popularity depressing, he seems affronted by the very idea. "Oh no. Not at all! We were just interested in different sorts of things. Of course television changes. Everything changes. You don't want to be going around saying, Oh woe is me. You want to be saying, Ah, that's a new opportunity! Let's exploit it that way."

If he were 21 today, would he go into television?

"Oh no." He shakes his head firmly. "Because what made it so exciting 50 years ago was that nobody knew where it was going. It was very unpopular, and the world was open. If I was 21 now I'd know something about digital and new media and DVDs and marketing and blogging - whatever that might be. And I might be in there. Or maybe I'd go into whatever happens when you press the red button on the remote control. I'm afraid, in my experience," and he roars with laughter, "it completely buggers everything."

· David Attenborough's new series of Planet Earth will begin on BBC1 at 9pm tomorrow.

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