Sir David's debt to Darwin

When Sir David Attenborough gets onto the subject of animals having more intelligence than humans give them credit for, I realise I'm in the presence of a living legend.

He switches into that well-known, earnest, slightly breathy voice and begins to describe his encounter with the Bolas spider in typically minute detail.

"It spins a thread of silk with a little blob on the bottom. When a moth comes by, holding the thread in its front leg, it whips the thread and hits the moth and hauls it in and eats it," he says, making actions and noises to illustrate.

"I went to see the cameraman who was working with them and he had eight female Bolas spiders, in eight milk bottles with eight sprays of leaves.

"He took me along and said 'now, this one is completely hopeless, she's so nervous if I put a light on or make any noise, this one doesn't mind noise, but she hates light. This one is just bone idle, I don't know what she's doing. But this one, come rain or hail, noise or light, she's doing her trick and it's a wonder!'

"What that told me was that these tiny little things, the size of my fingernail have got personalities, they're not all the same, they're not mechanisms, they're not clockwork toys, they're animals. And animals with poy-sonality!" Sir David says in a mock American accent.

Now 82, Sir David has travelled the world making natural history programmes for well over half a century, since Zoo Quest started on first came to the screen in 1954. But he considers it to be nothing more than a stroke of good luck that his programmes have achieved such success - and longevity.

He is back on the BBC tomorrow night when he presents a programme on evolution to tie in with the bicentenary of the birth of Shropshire's most famous son, Charles Darwin.

When he started putting it together, he dug out old archive footage from his TV shows to illustrate Shrewsbury-born Darwin's discovery of the inter-relatedness of life and his theory of natural selection. And Sir David learnt something about himself.

"The touching thing is, I now realise how in the marrow of my bones, in making all these programmes, I've been guided almost subconsciously by Darwinism. There's this young lad, 30 years ago, prancing about and dancing here and there and dark haired and slim and all that, who can't speak a word of English. It gives me a strange feeling watching that, but it shows that at least I've seen what I'm talking about."

Reflecting on his long career, he says: "I'm very very lucky to be working with a subject that can be looked at over and over again. Natural history appeals to kids of five, middle-aged people and university professors of 70 or 80. It goes right across the spectrum.

"It's also a lucky circumstance that electronic sophistication reached a peak around 1970. If you go back to the 60s or 50s footage looks very dated and you think 'God, this is very blurry' and it's probably in black and white. But in 1975, the technology is so good, you could be forgiven for thinking it was yesterday."

Such has been the documentary maker's influence as the voice and face of natural history that he was knighted in 1985 and regularly receives fan letters.

"It's very touching," he says. "I even get letters from people who have made a really distinguished contribution, who say 'the reason I went into my particular subject was because I saw those programmes that you made when I was a boy'. And that, of course, makes your little heart burst with pride and you think 'maybe it wasn't a waste of time'."

Over the years, Sir David has journeyed far and wide, seeking out the most incredible natural phenomena.

Who could forget the mountain gorillas that patted his head in Life On Earth, or the invasion of the Christmas Island crabs in The Trials Of Life?

So is there anywhere he regrets missing out on?

"I would love to have got to central Asia, to the Gobi Desert or Tibet and the reason I haven't is because you have to keep costs down, so you've got to see a lot of animals in a certain time and there aren't a lot of animals in Tibet. It's very empty and dry and very high and you have to walk for days and days to see another yak, so Zoo Quest for the Yak was never on my list."

Sir David makes it sound like filming his documentaries was easy, but he's had a few sticky scrapes over the years.

"I have plenty of pals who actually are hooked on adrenaline, they really like getting into hairy situations. I don't, I like non-hairy situations! And I can honestly say I don't think I've ever been at risk from an animal. The times I when I thought things were getting a bit too hairy for comfort have always been with other human beings.

"If you are with a man on a road and he's got a gun and he's drunk and he doesn't speak a single word of your language and he doesn't like the look of your face, that's not nice. That's when I've been most frightened."

l Charles Darwin And The Tree Of Life is on BBC1 tomorrow. See tonight's Shropshire Weekend supplement for a preview.

by Kate Whiting