In this interview, I talked to Sir David Attenborough at his home on Richmond Hill, about his experiences travelling around the globe during the past forty years, in pursuit of some of the most amazing and original natural history footage ever filmed.
Sir David Attenborough is probably Britain's best-known natural history film-maker. His career has spanned four decades and during that time he has travelled to some of the world's remotest regions. He took his first international flight in 1954, before the world was shrunk by jet engines and modern navigational aids. Since then, he has flown in a variety of aircraft and rested his weary head in countless hotels. Like anyone who has flown for a number of years, he has many tales to tell.
"Before the BBC, I joined the Navy in order to travel. They put me on an aircraft carrier moored to a buoy in the middle of the Firth of Forth, which wasn't exactly the kind of travel I had in mind! When I came out, I was a very junior 'irk' in publishing. I joined the BBC as a trainee. At first, the television service had no money and it was regarded as a rather raffish arm of the BBC."
Sir David found the studio format unimaginative and longed to take a camera outside to film, but he ways he was told, 'Sorry old boy, that's not what television's about. Television is about what you do in here.' He did however eventually succeed and his first expedition was to Freetown, West Africa with a team from the London Zoo.
"We were sent in an old two-engined Dakota, which held twenty or so people. It took three days to get there because we couldn't fly at night as there were no direction- finders [radio beacons]. The first night we stopped at Tangier, which I must say, to a young chap was quite a revelation, especially down at the Casbah! The second night we stopped in Dakar and then on the third day we got to Freetown. On board we were served sandwiches which came in cardboard boxes.
"The trip was more memorable for the return flight, also in a Dakota. I was looking out of the window and noticed all kinds of black stains beginning to appear on the wing and coming from the engine. Seeking an excuse to engage the stewardess in conversation I said to her: `those black stains out there, are they routine?'
"'It's awful. We're going to lose an engine!' she said. And with that all these sparks came out and the thing stopped. She gripped my arm and said 'What are we going to do?' and I said, 'You're supposed to be comforting me!'
"We came into a airport called Blackbushe, where my dear wife Jane was waiting for me. She turned to her companion, the cameraman's wife who was a 'you-know-who-I-am - I've-done-everything sort-of-girl', and said 'They're coming in on one engine.' She replied, 'Oh, they always do that for practice!' So Jane wasn't in the least bit alarmed when we finally landed."
Sir David remembers how flights to the Far East were done in four or five stages. "Getting to places like Bangkok or Singapore was a hell of a sweat. But when you got there it was the back of beyond. It was just a series of small tin sheds. You felt you were really in the 'mystic east' with all these hucksters around which you were never quite sure weren't pickpockets and loose ladies"
Trips to New Guinea were little short of an epic, taking weeks to arrive. "You had to fly Australia and then go up to Port Moresby, New Guinea and from there to Lae. From Lae you had to get a missionary aircraft to fly you the rest of the way. The journey took a week, but it often took a fortnight to get all our gear."
Travelling so extensively, the details of each journey tend to merge, but one flight stands out vividly in Sir David's memory. He was in Paraguay collecting armadillos and anacondas for London Zoo which were due to arrive in Britain on Christmas Eve. However when he got to Puerto Rico, the airline had cancelled all the outbound flights. He recalls the situation: "I asked the airline staff what I was going to do with all the animals as I didn't have any food for them. They were very unhelpful and said, 'That's your problem.'"
After making enquiries, Sir David discovered that Puerto Rico is a favourite Christmas haunt of wealthy Texans and New Yorkers. Consequently, a number of American airlines had empty return flights, one of which was willing to carry him and his precious cargo.
"It was a First Class-only plane, I mean it lushest kind of plane I've ever seen. There was a charming air-hostess to look after us. I told her the journey was taking much longer than I thought and I was running out of food. She said, 'Oh, how awful! But we've only got caviar and Californian peaches'. So I said, 'That's funny, that's exactly what armadillos like!' So that's what they ate all the way to New York!"
Sir David admits that he finds it difficult to sleep on aircraft, but abhors the idea of taking sleeping pills. He usually passes the hours reading magazines or the occasional autobiography. He rarely reads novels. Coping with talkative passengers is also difficult. His usual and most successful strategy is to give mono-syllabic answers and keep turning to his book. Crew, on the other hand, he says are absolutely charming. "My last trip was to the States, and on the way back I sat in the cockpit for take-off and landing. In a funny way, I think aircrew know that I've travelled a lot and therefore feel we are fellow professionals to some degree - which is nice, very complimentary."
Have passengers ever confused him with somebody else - perhaps they recognise his face but can't put a name to it? "I find people say embarrassing things like, 'Should I know you?' To which you reply, 'No you shouldn't - I mean why should you know me?'. Or 'Are you famous?' And you can't very well say, 'Well yes, I'm frightfully famous!' So I say 'no' to that one. And occasionally they say, 'It's wonderful to meet you. I think the best thing you've ever done was "Ghandi"!' and then you say, 'Thank you very much!'"
Sir David usually prefers to fly on wide-bodied jets where he can wander about, or on smaller aircraft which are half full allowing him to stretch out. He admits to being unable to tell one aircraft from another and he's not at all interested in engineering or the aircraft themselves. He doesn't even drive a car!
"I have colleagues who will look out of the window and say, 'Oh God! There's a 4B: I haven't seen of those for years.' But it's lost on me. I can just about tell if it's got a jet engine or one of those funny things on the front!" he admits.
After a long journey Sir David, like other travellers, is often faced with jetlag - but not as much as some. "I suffer much less than many of my colleagues. I am perfectly able to go to Australia and film within three hours of arrival. There is one class of companions who are always saying, 'Back home now, it's three o'clock in the morning'. Now I think a major element of jetlag is psychological, so I always say, I don't care what you do, but nobody ever tells me what time it is at home.' I'm absolutely strict about it. When I land, I put my watch right, and I don't care what I feel like, I will go to bed at half past eleven. If that means going to bed early or late, that's what I live by. As soon as you get there, live by that time," he recommends.
Travelling to so many countries means being a target for a variety of exotic illnesses. Surprisingly however, Sir David is not prone to them. "I haven't - touch wood - had a stomach upset for fifteen or twenty years. I remember coming home once after I'd been travelling for many days and nights. After the relief of getting home, I woke up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat, I mean absolutely swimming in it. I thought, 'This is it, I've got malaria. I should've been more careful.' I lay there for a long time working out what to do, with poor Jane lying fast asleep next to me. I finally clambered out of bed and I felt not too bad, actually. I then discovered that in the four months I'd been away, Jane had bought an electric blanket with double controls and it was on full. It was a great relief!"
However, he has not been completely immune. "Just recently we were coming out of Niger and it so happened that there was a great pilgrimage so all the hotels were full. We ended up sleeping on the floor in tin huts with bed bugs and fleas. I remember sleeping in places that were infested with rats and waking up with one trundling over my face. Actually, I hate rats! In my time, I've picked up all sorts of things in hotels - fleas, lice, tapeworm."
The best hotel Sir David ever stayed in was the old 'Raffles' in Singapore. But not all the hotels were as nice. "I remember there was a great hotel in Surabaya in East Java called 'The Orange Hotel', which was one of those great hotels, rather like Raffles really. We used to get up very early and film. They always used to come up to us and ask us what we would like and we would always say fried eggs - it was about the only thing they did really. But the fried eggs always turned up cold. No-one spoke English, so I kept says 'panas, panas' (hot, hot) but it didn't make any difference. So we thought the thing to do was to get up earlier and earlier, but whatever time we go up the fried eggs were cold. Eventually we discovered that they fried the eggs the previous night and stacked them in piles. Not the world's greatest breakfast!"
Sir David does not always endear himself to hotel managements. "The main problem I used to have staying in hotels was that I used to collect all these animals; and of course we used to have to smuggle them into the rooms. We put pythons and anacondas in sacks under our beds, armadillos in the bath and had bats hanging up on the curtains! Of course, everything got out in the middle of the night.
"I remember once in Madagascar I found some marvellous things called pill millipedes which are about the size of a golf ball. For some reason, I found a group of about a hundred and fifty of them - it was the most extraordinary sight. I thought they'd make a wonderful display at London Zoo, so I gathered up about a hundred or so and put them in a sack. That night, I had to stay in a hotel. In the middle of the night they found a hole in the sack and by morning they were all gone. I went out into the corridor and there were pill millipedes everywhere and I had to go dashing around picking the things up. I got into a lot of trouble for that!"
Animals - like airline passengers - are often unpredictable and occasionally get a little too close for comfort. Sir David recalls, "I was flying to East Africa in the old days, and for some reason I was absolutely shattered. I felt like hell. I was travelling to meet with Elsa, the famous 'Born Free' lioness. Joy Adamson, an Austrian Countess who found Elsa said to me (he mimics her Austrian accent): 'Oh David, it's the end of the world. Elsa is dying. She has been attacked by a strange lioness and she has run away'. I thought: 'Oh well, that's just tough. I'm not going to worry about it, I'll just try and calm her. Anyway, I finally got out a camp-bed and fell asleep. Well you know what it's like when you're really dead tired and the whole of your life blood seems to have just disappeared and you feel like a sack of wet dough. Well, I woke up with, this terrible weight on my chest and a frightful smell of halitosis! It was Elsa - and she was sitting on me. She had long hair around her chin, and was dribbling and I could see those yellow teeth and there was this terrible smell. I thought I was about to be her breakfast -I didn't know what go do. And then Joy came around the corner and said 'Ah Elsa, meine liebchen!' Never mind me, who was about go be her liebchen's breakfast! And then this thing got up and went off. It was quite an awakening, I can tell you!"
Sometimes when things don't go according to plan, Sir David and his crew might find they've got spare time on their hands. What do they do? "I don't approve of sunbathing and it's bad for you. On occasions like that, if you're interested in natural history, there's always quite a lot to do. Also I always take a serious book along with me and I listen to music."
His wife Jane has accompanied him only twice on working trips: once to the States and once to Australia. "The crew are very nice about it, but actually you know perfectly well that you're taking up a seat that they could have spread themselves into. Also, being a spare wheel on these trips with nothing to do is very demoralising."
There must be very few places on the globe that Sir David has not visited. One is Central Asia, which he admits he would very much like to visit. "I've been to Nepal but I'd like to go to Tibet. It must be a wonderful place to go. I don't think there's anything there, but it would be a nice place to visit," he muses.
Having spent half his life travelling, is there the spirit of the gypsy still in him? "No, not really, I don't think there is. I am absolutely dependent on this place (indicating his home in Richmond). We've lived here for thirty eight years. This is where our kids were born and this is my place. As far as I'm concerned, if I can't have this, I don't want anything."
So what is the Attenborough motivation to continue travelling? "I like animals. I like natural history. The travel bit is not the important bit. The travel bit is what you have to do in order to go and look at animals."
Would he have liked to have been someone like Darwin and come back today? "Oh yes, I think so. I mean, one is living an amazingly privileged life. It's only been the last twenty or so years that one could have possibly gone to all the places you and I go to. Very few people in the history of biology could have seen as much of the actual things that I have and the sad thing is that I do so little with it. I'm so busy gobbling it up that I don't sort of digest it.
"But one of the great things, far more exciting than going to the moon, would to have been not Darwin, but Captain Cook. On his first and second voyage, he went round the Pacific and went to Tahiti where he saw a new brand of humanity, and a completely new set of animals and plants. That must have been mind-blowing. The reverse side of the coin in having this extraordinary ability to go anywhere, is that no-one anywhere is remote any more. I just caught the end of it in the mid-fifties. When I was right in the middle of Borneo, you thought you were in a different world. There was no radio, no ways of communicating - but it was nothing compared to what Cook did. I just wish the world was twice as big and half of it was still unexplored."
Finally I asked Sir David what his most frequently asked question in an interview was. "It's usually 'what are you going to do next?' and you didn't ask me! Congratulations! And it's one that drives you potty. There are two questions that get asked towards the end of an interview. 'What are you working on now?' and other is 'What was your most exciting moment?'
"If I do a series or tapes for the States and it's sponsored by somebody for the public broadcast system, I am committed to going on tour around various stations. So I do all these interviews, sometimes six or eight in a day. The trouble is they all ask the same questions and you get to a stage when you can't remember whether you've said it before, maybe in the last interview or maybe in this one. Eventually, you get bored with it and make things up because you can't bear it any longer. So they say, 'And what was your most exciting moment?' 'Well, I once had to do hand-to-hand battle with a mouse...a rather ferocious animal!' And their eyes get bigger. 'And what is your next series?' 'Well I thought: Whore-Houses of the World!'... 'What?!'"