"(As Attenborough) Tonight on Life On Earth we look at a creature whose survival in the modern world continues to baffle scientists and laymen alike." "He's best known as a broadcaster one of that select band who can transmit their enthusiasm to a mass audience." "He's looked after BBC documentary series and other endangered species for what seems like forever yet he grows younger every year." " He is David Attenborough." " Sir David Attenborough." "David Attenborough." "(Attenborough) I personally get huge pleasure from seeing, let us say, a lake covered with flamingos in the early dawn in Africa, which is a marvellous thrilling, exciting sight!" "If I can communicate that pleasure to others through various devices, like television cameras that is a great reinforcement of the pleasure for me," "If you look back before David started his broadcasting career, who knew what a coral reef what a tropical rainforest was?" "He's seen more things in the world than any other living being," "In Australia, North America in Europe and here in Africa..." "Here in the tiny Comoros islands." "Here in the tropical rainforest of Sumatra." "Six feet beneath the surface of the earth." "200 miles south of Java." "(As Attenborough) And...here we are... (Laughter)" "He's always been that person..." "Hair all over the place," "If you took a picture of Dave aged 12, it would fit perfectly with what he is now." "OK, standing by." "Sound's running." "Do you want a rehearsal?" " Some level, please." " Two, three, four, five, six..." " (Woman) Going for a take." " Sound." "Speed." "Action." "(Palin) If Attenborough has seen more things in the world than anyone, he's also brought most of them back with him," "Shifts And Expedients Of Camp Life, Travel And Exploration." "This is really what I need." "I've known David since Monty Python days, when he was one of the bosses of BBC Television," "He likes to play a sort of quiz game on unsuspecting visitors," " Number three is...?" " It's extremely heavy." "I would have thought it was an egg of some kind, but I can't imagine..." " Yes." "Yes." "It's an egg." " It's come from inside some creature?" " Dinosaur egg." " Full marks." " Really?" " Ten out of ten." "I can't help feeling it's a playful way of hiding a very serious obsession," "Do you get books of every place you go to?" "Your shelves are stocked." "Almost every book on Papua ever written in English." " That's important to you." " Don't ask me if I've read them all." " If you haven't got one, you get it?" " Yes." "Do you?" "No." "A man possessed by his enthusiasms, ls this the key to David's unique success in television?" "Do you know what that is?" "I've a feeling it's enormously significant because everything else here is." "Only by touching that..." "It's very heavy." "I'm really not sure." "An early design for a portable television?" "(Laughs) The programmes have deteriorated." "We all know this author, zoologist, producer, David Attenborough." "Did you have any ambition to become an actor like Dickie?" "No, I was quite happy to leave it to him." "He was stage-struck from when he was that high and he was always putting up shows of one sort or another and wanting casts, and who better to recruit than his brother?" "He went on to drama school and I went on to take a science degree and I think we're equally surprised to find ourselves in television now." "Action." "Using their long chimp-like arms... (Palin) So how did David become such a world-renowned broadcaster?" "Are there clues in his upbringing?" "I don't think my childhood was particularly different from other boys'." "I think children are excited by what they see and by finding out about the world about them." "Everybody's interested in why tadpoles turn into frogs, which is extraordinary and marvellous and wonderful." "Everybody thrills to see a butterfly climb out of a chrysalis." "The family used to go on holiday in North Wales, on Anglesey." "I used to go on a farm and dress up as a farmer and Dave would disappear, you couldn't find him anywhere." "He was on the beach on Penmon Point, on Penmon Island fascinated by the puffins or whatever." "But mostly collecting quartz, rocks, fossils, anything that created an atmosphere of the wild and the outside." "(Palin) It sometimes seems that David's simply pursued this love of the wild and his passion for fossils ever since," "I used to come to these old ironstone quarries in Leicestershire as a boy." "And the moments of success when the rock fell apart and revealed a shell that hadn't seen the sun for 200 million years and that I was the first human being to see seemed to me then as it still seems to me now" "to be moments of magic." "Oh, gosh!" "(Palin) After studying Natural Sciences at Cambridge," "David did his stint of national service and then worked for a publisher in London," "But it was a far cry from wilderness," "He wasn't enjoying himself until one day," "(Attenborough) I saw a job advertised in the Times for a BBC radio producer," "I applied for it and I didn't even get an interview." "And I think it was, two weeks afterwards I got a letter from the BBC which said," ""We've seen your application" ""and are interested in your qualifications." ""We know you didn't get the job in radio but we've got this new thing called television." ""A lot of people are rude about it but we think there could be something there."" "(Palin) BBC Television was then based at Alexandra Palace, or Ally Pally," "(Attenborough) And there were the first cameras in the world to produce a public television system," "In 1952 there were perhaps ten to a dozen people who did all non-fiction broadcasting in the United Kingdom." "All." "So we all did everything." "Gardening and ballet and short stories and quizzes and political programmes and prime ministerial broadcasts and archaeology and natural history." "Everything." "(Palin) David started out as a production assistant on a programme called, "Animal, Vegetable Or Mineral?", which obviously left quite an impression on him," "Good evening and dobry vecer." "I'm sure that's wrong, but I have to say it that way because tonight we have the National Archaeological Museum of Prague." "And here is the first object." "Ah." "Lovely, isn't it?" "A very spirited animal, Glyn." "And obviously, like our spirited chairman, from the Celtic fringe." "How are we doing?" "Two things you can always say." "Either it's a ritual object or else... money." "You can always say it's one or the other." " And that is money." " Ritual..." "Oh." "And they are what my Hungarian colleagues would call a Pécel bowl." " It's silica of some kind, volcanic..." " It is silica." " Volcanic, yes." "Two marks." " Two marks." "Out of how many?" " It shines like this..." " Shine's quite good." " Is it something you look into?" " Yes." " A mirror?" " Really." " Is it?" "Really?" " Yeah." " 2000 BC." " Wow." "Yes, very good." "I'm going to give you three marks." "(Attenborough) The programmes were all live," "And cue the music and fade up camera one and Bill came on the screen and he said (Cockney) "Now, I am a rat-catcher" ""and I'd like to show you what it is I catch."" "And he produced this appalling thing of rats." "Then he produced the other one and he said" ""This one is Rattus rattus norvegicus, a brown rat" ""and this one is Rattus rattus rattus the black or sewer rat" ""and he's the one I'd like to show you first."" "And then to my horror he got hold of the cage, lifted the lid and plunged his hand into this mass of rats and got the biggest rat I've ever seen by the tail, whipped it out, slammed the lid shut and started doing this." "While he was doing it, something went in his mind." "He looked at the camera and said" ""I don't want you to suppose that I am in any way maltreating this rat," ""but unless I get him slightly dizzy, the bastard'll bite me."" "(Palin) It feels as though David's always been on our screens, but there was a first time, in 1955," "(Attenborough) We hatched a scheme with London Zoo to collect animals," "It was going to be presented from the studio with little bits of film which we would shoot on location in Africa and then the man from the zoo would show the animals," " Sierra Leone." " Right." "Wow." "We were going to look for a bird called Picathartes gymnocephalus." "No one had seen its nest and very few people had seen it alive, so the zoo wanted one and we went for it." "(Attenborough) As well as Picathartes, we hoped to take back a representative collection of the whole of the animal life of this part of Africa," "That's Jack Lester." "He was keeper of the reptile house in London Zoo." "In charge of the trip." "Our job was filming him." "A gaboon viper, and just as deadly as the cobras," "When Jack heard of it he was delighted and came running, anxious to catch such a handsome snake for his reptile house," "But we were able to produce some magic of our own," "While the dance was going on, I recorded the music on my tape recorder," "This was the object of a great deal of curiosity," "I always played the music back and let the singers listen to themselves," "Blank astonishment was always followed by huge grins of delight," "(Singing on tape)" ""Yes, I love David Attenborough's programmes."" "That's remarkable." "(Singing continuing)" "Dear Jack got very ill as a result of this trip." "The BBC said, "If Jack Lester can't appear because he's ill," ""Attenborough, go down and do it."" "That's the only reason I appeared in this thing at all." "A month ago, Charles Lagus and I returned from spending four months in search of a dragon." "But we didn't keep our eyes shut on the way," "We looked at many other things," "At the time, that's what zoos did," "A, so that people could see the wonders of the world" "B, so that they could learn about them, scientists could learn about them and C, so that you could learn how you might be able to breed them," "All of which were perfectly laudable propositions," "I still think zoos have a very good function, but you can't go catching in the free way we did 50 years ago," "You've got to provide them with much better cages than we did," "Enclosures would be a nicer word," "I think with dismay at some of the birds that we happily put in aviaries," "I don't think birds of prey should be kept in aviaries." "The only reason I've gone on appearing is that I realised after a bit it gave you some power to dictate how the programme's going to go," "When I caught up with them at the top of the pass," "I found, to my horror, that the men were refusing to go any further," "They told me very firmly that this was the end of their tribal frontier," "I said, "Come on, lads."" "See?" "And they said, "No good, no good."" "I said, "Why not?" They said, "We no go along him."" ""Why not?" I said." "They said, "Him no good." "He kai-kai man."" "That means they're cannibals down there." "I said, "Now, lads, if it's another sixpence a day he wants," ""we can have a proper organised talk about this."" "And they said, "No, him no good." "Bad fellow."" "While we were saying this, with me being very British about the whole thing," "I suddenly looked down the slope and I saw behind a tree a white cockatoo feather flash." "I turned round and there behind a boulder was a glint of a knife." "And I thought, "Oh..." being, you know..." "And while I was in the process of thinking, "Oh"... suddenly, out onto the track, about 70 or 80 men, suddenly jumped out of hiding and ran down towards us brandishing spears and waving knives." "To say I was alarmed is to put it mildly," "Charles Lagus, who was my companion with a camera, had the presence of mind simply to turn it, so I know what happened." "I walked towards this screaming horde of men and I stuck out my hand and heard myself say," ""Good afternoon."" "It's true." "To my enormous relief, they greeted me not fiercely, but with considerable enthusiasm," "Laughing at myself, I discovered that this, in fact, is merely the normal New Guinea welcome," "So, at last, we sailed safely into the wide, calm bay of Komodo," "This was the home of the dragon which we'd come so far to see," "Within half an hour there was a rustle in the bush and there was the dragon," "He looked almost as though he had walked out of some prehistoric age," "This was tremendously exciting for us," "Our first sight of this magnificent monster, the climax of four months of arduous travel," "All we had to do was to wait," "And down came the door," "Hastily we piled boulders on the door so that he couldn't lift it up," "We had got him," " Oh!" " Respect." "Respect." "That's fantastic." "(Palin) Zoo Quest ran to six series and brought fresh supplies for David's collection," " So egg, nul points." " I don't get any points for that." "OK." "Erm, well, I don't know really where to begin." "It looks like it's come from some almost extinct animal." "Yes." "I actually found it myself in bits in Madagascar." "Aepyornis, the elephant bird." "The heaviest bird and the biggest egg that ever existed." "Because, if you got an egg that was any bigger than that, it would have to be so thick to hold the contents that the young chick would never be able to hammer its way out." "Thus invalidating the process." " How many pieces was it...?" " Quite a lot. 30, I should think." "They were all found in one place and I stuck them together with camera tape and it's lived with me ever since." "(Palin) By the early '60s David was a well-established television personality," "Now it was time for something completely different..." "# Come on over, baby Whole lot of shakin' going on" "# Well, come on over, baby We take the bull by the horns... #" "In 1964 the BBC created a second television channel offering greater choice," "It received a mixed reception," "Some programmes were seen as elitist and there were too many repeats," "To breathe life into their fledgling channel, the management turned to a rising young star," "Not yet 40 years old, the new head of BBC2 was David Attenborough," "(Attenborough) It was an invitation you simply couldn't refuse," "You were offered several million pounds." ""Go out and create programmes."" "You'd say, "What sort of programmes?"" "They'd say, "That's why you've been appointed."" "What's wrong with having something different for a change?" "We begin by welcoming everyone who hasn't been with us before to Late Night Line-Up." "That was a thrilling opportunity," "I said, "Right, we'll make new programmes" ""with either subjects or treatments that no other network has ever done," ""We won't produce carbon copies of what already exists,"" "In other areas, in light entertainment, we shall continue to look for the new, experimental stars, people who try new lines in comedy." "The two successes have been The Likely Lads and Not Only But Also with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore." "In every area we hope to be trying these new things, these different things." "I think we must proffer our heartfelt congratulations to Mr David Attenborough here." " Bless his heart." " Bless his heart." "Bless his cotton socks." "Who moved on from the heady world of making wonderful documentaries about the mating habits of Armand and Michaela Denis... to pioneer a system of television unrivalled throughout the human world." "(Palin) It was David who masterminded a dramatic new look for BBC Television," "(Man) Championship point for the third time for Laver," "(Palin) In July 1967 he oversaw the launch of Europe's first colour television service," "It's out and that's the championship," "(Palin) Colour opened up new opportunities," "Sports that had been meaningless in black and white became popular viewing," "We may not realise just how much he created the television we know today," "The World About Us was the first hour-long documentary strand," "Its success led to greater things," "We just did let ourselves go a little and set up a programme called Civilisation which showed in colour the loveliest pictures and buildings in Europe." "It does seem hard to believe that European civilisation can ever vanish." "And yet, you know, it has happened once." "(Palin) Civilisation, presented by Kenneth Clark, was the first of the landmark series jewels in the crown of BBC television," "(Attenborough) I was most proud of the dynasty that started with Civilisation and went on to The Ascent Of Man," "Those two, it seemed to me inaugurated a new kind of television documentary... which have had a number of descendants but in their time they were innovative and I think they actually enriched people's lives, and what more do you want?" "And for his achievement in pioneering the philosophy of colour television programmes in Britain the winner is David Attenborough." "(Brass fanfare)" "(Palin) David was rewarded by being promoted to BBC Director of Programmes," "But he missed his film trips to wild places and asked that occasionally he be allowed out of his suit," "I think he was very proud of colour and Two and so on." "I think he derived great satisfaction from that, and pride, rightly." "But it wasn't his scene." "Sitting in an office was not his scene." "His scene is out somewhere in those ridiculous trousers that are likely to fall off at any moment, or up to his eyes and knees in God knows what." "That's Dave's world." "There's a whole generation watching who never saw that moment in Borneo when you were underground in the cave full of bats." "You were standing in the 20-foot-high pile of..." "What will I call it?" "Droppings?" "Nor is it just simply bat droppings or bird droppings." "It's much more complicated than that because the entire surface of it is covered with a glistening, moving carpet of cockroaches." "(Clive James) I've always wanted to ask this question." "How did you feel?" "Well, I tell you, I stood at the top of that pile, choking with ammonia." "This cave, this particular part of it," "(Sniffs)... makes... (Coughs)" "This ammonia is really quite choking." "The director, who was at the bottom of course, was shouting up." "And he said" ""Say something." "Talk to the camera about what it's like."" "So I looked at the camera and said..." "This immense number of bats flying round here in a panic, not one of them is colliding with the other." "Nor, indeed, am I in any danger whatsoever of being hit by them." ""And they don't fly into your hair because they are so clever," ""with this ultrasound."" "The old fear that people have of bats getting caught in their hair is actually quite unfounded." "And the director said, "Terrific." "Cut." And a bat went boom!" "(Palin) Through the early '70s David led a double life half senior manager at the BBC, half explorer and film maker," "In the series Tribal Eye he pursued his passion for anthropology," "David was the first film maker to visit Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands the scene of a violent rebellion against the white man's rule," "(Attenborough) We sent all kinds of messages," ""David Attenborough and team, can they come?"" "I wasn't at all sure what kind of reception we'd get." " You'd no idea?" " No." "It's not set up at all." "And I thought they were not too friendly," "Were you frightened at all at this moment?" "I was trying to get out." "(Shouting)" "(Palin) Lifting the whole canoe out of the water with you in it," "(Speaking in local language)" "Welcome." "How do you do?" "How do you do?" " He come latertime," " Later," "What did you think was going to happen?" "I'd no idea." " Yes, please." "I lead you to him." " Thank you." "We'd sent a message by radio to say that David Attenborough was coming," "(All) # God save our gracious..." "Fantastic." "# ...our noble Queen" "# God save the Queen" "# Send her victorious" "# Happy and glorious..." "They actually, I think, thought I was the Duke of Edinburgh." "They got the message wrong." "Attenborough and Edinburgh." "Seems to happen a lot." "# God save the Queen #" "And it got slightly more embarrassing because since they wanted to reject everything to do with Westerners, they said that we had to get rid of all our European clothes in order that I could go any further." "A stranger might only go into this house of memories if he showed proper reverence to the ancient gods and discarded his alien Western clothes," "(Palin) Good heavens, Very casual," "Vey cas," "(Attenborough) I can tell you, wetbark cloth around the loins is quite a strange feeling," " Did the camera crew have to strip?" " Yes, we all did." "I wonder what the Duke of Edinburgh would say," "Bending with the hands behind the back is quite tricky," "(Singing)" "(Palin) Meanwhile at the BBC Natural Histoy Unit in Bristol, an ambitious television series was being developed," "It became very clear to us in Bristol that what should naturally follow from both the Bronowski and the Clark series was a major work about natural history." "We already had a reputation for doing some pretty good programmes, but we didn't have an army of specialist wildlife cameramen and the confidence of the people in London to do it," "Can we make a start, please?" "Nevertheless a number of people in Bristol," "Richard Brock, John Sparks, were all of the same idea that if it was going to be done, Bristol would do it," "We'd heard rumours that David who'd been elevated up and up through the BBC administrative hierarchy was beginning to get disenchanted." "Everybody could see, I reckon, that an obvious candidate for that kind of treatment was the natural world." "I was on fire to do it myself but I couldn't do it while I was controller of BBC2 or director of programmes." "I was frightened that somebody else would get it before I could manage to resign and do it myself." "I got home quite late one evening and there was an urgent message to phone Dave." "The moment I came in I had to ring him at once." "I dialled the number and said, "Dave..." "Hang on," he said, "I'm coming down."" "I thought, "My God, something terrible's happened."" "He rushed into the house and said "Dick, I'm at my wits' end." ""I don't know what to do or what to say." ""I'm likely to be asked to be the new director general."" "I said, "So?"" ""I can't do that, can I?"" "I said, "No, Dave I don't suppose you can."" ""God, of course I can't." "Behind a desk?" "There's no way I'm going to sit..."" "I said, "You're right." "Are you asking my opinion?"" ""Yes." "What is your opinion?"" ""You'd be a bloody fool if you accepted it." ""You should go on doing what you're marvellous at and what you love."" "(Palin) David decided to go with his heart and the result was a quantum leap in wildlife programming," "(Attenborough) There are four million different kinds of animals and plants, four million different solutions to the problems of staying alive," "This is the story of how a few of them came to be as they are," "(Parsons) What it did do for the first time was it integrated in a satisfactory way a very big story with David's knack of presentation, which bound the whole thing together into a unity," "The rocks here are getting on for 2,000 million years old." "It was the first time we'd really taken the story along by the first half of the paragraph being spoken in Tunisia and the second half of the paragraph being spoken in South Africa." "And then, about 20 or 30 years ago, people realised that they'd been looking in the wrong rocks and in the wrong way." "These are the right rocks." "You could pick him up in a location 3,000 miles away and remind him of what he said and he'd go away into a corner and..." ""OK, I'm ready to do that now."" "He'd come out in front of the camera and do it." "He'd probably do it in one take." "(Palin) In the series, David told the story of evolution, from the first fossilised signs of life to the most complex living creatures," "Here, at least, we can get some idea of what things may have been like when their distant relatives the trilobites swarmed in the seas of long ago." "Life On Earth was a continuous story from programme one right to the end of programme thirteen, and people were saying halfway through the series," ""We don't want to stop watching this." ""We want to know what happens next." And..." "That's an amazing ability and something that's quite special." "(Palin) The highlight of the series was perhaps one of the most memorable moments on television " "David's encounter with mountain gorillas in Rwanda," "And this is how they spend most of their time lounging on the ground grooming one another." "Sometimes they even allow others to join in." "There is more meaning and mutual understanding in exchanging a glance with a gorilla than any other animal I know." "We're so similar." "Their sight, their hearing, their sense of smell are so similar to ours that we see the world in the same way as they do." "Suddenly you've got quite a lump in your throat, that you suddenly saw, that for the first time and it was the first time it was possible for a single unit and a single man and a single viewer" "to get a comprehensive view of the planet as a planet," "(Palin) The success of Life On Earth spawned an entire generation of definitive natural history series," "The Living Planet looked at how life adapted itself to different habitats and cast David in the role of action man," "All living creatures on the earth and all material objects on it are subject to the pull of one great force." "The force of gravity." "Were that to be suspended even for a moment the most extraordinary things would begin to happen." "I, for example, would suddenly float into the air because I, at the moment..." "..am flying in an aircraft on a very special course which, in effect cancels out the effect of gravity." "Trudging up the face of a dune like this is extremely hard work." "Not only am I in the middle of Asia, hundreds of miles from the sea but I am over two vertical miles above its level." "Fine ash is falling all around." "There are gusts of choking poisonous gas." "At night it gets so cold that it can freeze." "And that makes this the deepest valley in the world." "The thing about jungles is that they're like a sea of trees," "The leaves are at the top, 150 feet up," "That's where the sunshine and the wind is, and all the life." "As you go down it gets darker and there are fewer animals." "I thought, "There must be a way of getting ladders to get up there."" "A chap called Adrian Warren, who is ludicrously fit," "He said, "It's perfectly simple." "We will get up there." "We'll get up on ropes."" "I said, "Now, look, lad." "How will we get up on ropes?" He said, "Easy."" "I said, "How?"" "He said, "You've got handles with ratchets on them which will go up," ""You have slings, you put your legs in them and work your way up," ""When you want to come down again," ""you take the rope and pass it round here and bring that round there." ""Then you unclip this and make sure you undo that." ""Then you do the other, take four turns round the rope, fall back and you're OK."" ""Oh, yes," I said. "Fine."" "So I start up this and for the first 18 inches it's good." "Amazing," "After about two feet you think it's quite tiring and after about three foot six you think, "Blimey, I'm a long way up,"" "When you get actually about 60 or 70 feet up, it is alarming," "It suddenly dawned on me that if I couldn't actually remember what Adrian Warren had told me about the knot there was no way that anyone was going to come and say," ""Left over right and right over left,"" "cos I was up there, spinning slowly, you see." "I thought, "I've had enough of this," ""I think I'll do my little bit where I come down now,"" "And I felt very alone," "And so I started talking to myself." "I was saying things like, "Now, there is no need to panic." ""All you have to do is to remember" ""the little rabbit came out of his hole and went round the log three times" ""and then went back in there."" "And then I started swearing." "And I looked down and I saw the boys from the crew falling about with laughter." "I couldn't think why." "I'd fallen for the oldest trick in the game." "I had forgotten that I'd got a radio mike on and they were hearing every word I'd said." "(Palin) Tales told by those who've travelled with David confirm that vanity is not one of his vices," "(Man) I shared a tent with David," "I hadn't a clue how to put it up, but he did it." "He'd sweep it out in the morning." "I'd think, "This guy used to be managing director of the BBC." ""He's sweeping out my tent."" "We did one trip in Virginia and he was wading around in the swamp up to his midriff." "and we finished that, went to the airport and then me and him flew to New York." "him still in his swamp trousers." "Given three cases to carry, he will always pick the heaviest, and we're all running around like little hens round a rooster trying to stop him doing some damage to himself by taking the heaviest case." "(Ross) His suitcase would go for a high price in the Antiques Roadshow," "It's ancient, battered, held together with camera tape, Araldite, and he will not give it up." "His trousers have done a few series now." "When I was filming in Borneo the bottoms of his trousers were frayed." "Vanessa said "We can't have those trousers."" ""Why not?" "I've worn them for years."" "Before a take you'll tell him to smooth his hair down and tuck his shirt in." "He's always got wine and food stains on his shirt, but that makes him human." "He was always a mess." "If you look at pictures, I'm rather over dapper and Dave with his socks down over his shoes and his trousers splitting and his shirt filthy dirty." "He doesn't smell." "They're quite clean, but he doesn't give a damn." "(Palin) David favours a wardrobe of sturdy predictability," "Regulation blue shirt and trusty beige trousers," "People say, "Why do you always wear the same thing?"" "There are very practical reasons." "It enables you, in terms of continuity, to cut things together so that stuff you shot two years ago, if you really wanted to stick another thing in, you could put the two together." "The other important thing for me, it seems to me that if you change your costume and wear, I don't know some kind of fashionable thing, people say, "Why has he done that?" "Is it trying to tell us something?" ""Has the climate changed?" "What's he trying to do?"" "So you are asking for attention away from what it is you're trying to talk about." "It's much better that the narrator should have the same things so he doesn't suddenly appear with a funny hat or with a feather boa." "I think you should try the feather boa, David, next time." " 155." " Action." "(Palin) On camera, David is the complete professional," "The world around him is less reliable," "It's so effective that even a rich woodland like this can seem totally devoid of birds." "But that's a completely different sound." "That's an aeroplane." "Cut." "There is some life actually within this snowfield itself because this snow is not white..." "(Laughs)" "Each one of them has his own harem." "I estimate that this one has about 100 females in his and his sole object in life at the moment is to make quite sure that he and he alone mates with every single one of them." "And to that, he must fight." "He is so charged up, this being the breeding season, that he will display to almost anything...including me!" "The volcanoes of today are mere feeble flickers... (Laughs)" "66, take three." "ls there anything you wouldn't do?" "I've never made a secret of the fact that I'm not in love with rats." "I've had many good reasons for not being in love with rats, but I had the best reason for not being in love with rats only a few weeks ago." "I'd been reckless enough to boast that I hadn't had a stomach upset for 25 years and I was in India and I got one." "I ran for the loo and I got rid of my problems and as I was sitting there in extremis a rat emerged from the depths of the loo and jumped out from between my legs." "And I reckon that was not an endearing act." "(Palin) David's programmes have never avoided the darker side of nature," "The Trials Of Life shocked us with the apparent cruelty of killer whales," "(Attenborough) Often the successful hunter takes its victim straight out to sea without even killing it, and there it plays with its catch as if it were exulting in triumph," "(Palin) How could the natural world be so needlessly violent?" "I often get letters, quite frequently people say how they like the programmes a lot but I never give credit to the Almighty Power that created nature." "To which I reply it's funny that people, when they say that this is evidence of Almighty, always quote beautiful things." "They always quote orchids and hummingbirds and butterflies and roses." "But I always have to think too of a little boy sitting on the banks of a river in West Africa who has a worm boring through his eyeball turning him blind before he's five years old." "I reply and say," ""Presumably the God you speak about created the worm as well."" "And I find that baffling, to credit a merciful God that action and therefore it seems to me safer to show things that I know to be truthful and factual and allow people to make up their own mind about the moralities of this thing" "or indeed the theology of this thing." "We made a film about chimps hunting monkeys," "That was an extraordinary and powerful and alarming and dismaying thing to see," "(Shrieking)" "(Attenborough) They've got one!" "The hunters are tearing it apart." "Again people say, "How can you put on such savagery" ""of a predator catching prey?" ""You are milking it for violence."" "If they saw what you put out on the cutting room floor, of this animal in suffering..." "It's a very narrow line you have to tread." "You cannot, in my view, eliminate it entirely." "That is to sentimentalise and to distort reality." "But, equally, some of it is very hard to take." "But it was about the reality of what chimps are and we are very close to what chimps are," "And there's the reward for that long chase." "The divided body of a colobus monkey." "And if we are appalled by that violence and bloodlust, we might also see in that too perhaps the origins of the teamwork that have, in the end brought human beings many of their greatest triumphs." "(Palin) An Attenborough classic," "But is this style of presenting now seen as uncool in the steamy jungle of tabloid television with its prowling packs of aspiring nature jockeys?" "Or is there life in the old dog yet?" "David's presentation style is sort of traditional but what he allows you editorially is to leap into subject areas that you wouldn't go to otherwise." "And the Natural History Unit's reputation" "I think has been largely built around those pieces, the things that no one else would actually do." "I know that whenever I go and see David and say, "Right, David, what's next?"" "I know I'm not going to get an easy..." "The subject coming back is going to be something you think, "Oh." ""We're going to go there, are we?"" "This is a picture of a mountain that has haunted me, well for nearly 50 years, since 1954." "Roraima." "It's supposed to be the origin of the Conan Doyle novel where you wonder if there were dinosaurs..." " The Lost World." " That's right." "Fantastic book." "I love it." "I didn't get up it for 40 years." "Desperately needing an excuse for a programme to take me up Roraima." "Three of us came up with this very sensible programme idea which was going to be about ecologies, about animals and plants." "Plants, we thought, needed to come into the equation but you can't do too much on them because they don't move." "We heard that David had an idea for his next series and was thinking on the same lines." "It is such a spectacular mountain." "When you see it on the far distant horizon and then this fabulous huge, great, vertical sandstone wall, it's just a kind of magical, extraordinary place." "We went to his house and David as always, listened to our idea and nodded and was very complimentary about it, then said, "But I was thinking about something a bit bolder."" "The plants that grew up there had been isolated for so long and are in such a different environment from anything down here that new species of plants had evolved up there." "Sure enough, by the end of lunch, we had all signed up to do six hours on plants." "I still remember coming down the M4 back to Bristol." "Suddenly we all looked at each other and thought, "My God." ""We've agreed with David to do six hours on plants."" "Not an obvious one, but I was able to work that into a series about plants." "Talking to the Americans, in this case Ted Turner over a breakfast, I think, saying," ""Look, Ted, I want to do a series about plants"" "and Ted saying, "They're not very interesting, are they?"" "And Jane Fonda, I think who was there at the breakfast piped in and said, "Ted, I love flowers." "We gotta have this series."" "And so we got the money from America." "(Attenborough) Plants cut off up here from the hot rainforest below adapt to their surroundings in their own individual way," "Here it rains almost every day and sometimes for days on end," "I'm in South America, on the top of an immense sandstone plateau 9,000 feet high, five miles across, surrounded by huge vertical cliffs," "This is Mount Roraima." "It was such a ridiculous idea to try and bring to the BBC1 audience things that don't move, but it ended up capturing people's imagination." "And this is how they do it." "(Attenborough) The programmes I've been involved in always, always the major credit belongs to the cameramen," "But it has never been greater, never been more so than in this instance when the cameramen who did the time-lapse produced such wonderful things," "I mean, my jaw sags." "What I like about travel you want to go somewhere, you say, "Perhaps you could fit this in."" "It's about enthusiasm." "If you've somewhere you want to go, you can..." "There are a number of places I want to go that I haven't been to so I don't suppose I'd go back to Roraima." " Like where?" " Oh, western Tibet." "The forests of southwestern China." "Haven't been there." "Have you?" " (Palin) Never." " What are you doing?" " Wasting your time!" " I'm about 25 series behind you, David." "(Both laugh)" "(Palin) David has seen great changes to the natural world over his career," "Although he's worked behind the scenes to help conservation causes, he's been reluctant to make overtly campaigning programmes," "In The State Of The Planet he revealed his true feelings," "The future of life on earth depends on our ability to take action." "Many individuals are doing what they can but real success can only come if there's a change in our societies, in our economics and in our politics." "I've been lucky in my lifetime to see some of the greatest spectacles that the natural world has to offer." "Surely we have a responsibility to leave for future generations a planet that is healthy and habitable by all species." "(Palin) But preaching has never been David's style," "He's always seen himself as a storyteller, an enthusiast," "I can have enough of people leaning out of the television screen and saying," ""You lazy, irresponsible, ignorant chaps" ""sitting there in your comfortable suburban home!" ""Why don't you care for this, subscribe to that or go out and do the other?"" "I think the best way of taking the message to the people is by showing them the pleasure, not saying every time, "You've got to do something about it."" "By saying, "Isn't this lovely?" the other bit follows." "(Palin) This is what he does best, for 50 years, David has turned his private passions into public entertainment," "He's probably done more to stimulate our love of nature than anyone else alive," "And to do that, they stood upright on two feet, as I'm doing." "(Woman) And cut." " (Mimics monkey cries) - (Monkey screeches)" "Ooh!" "Ah!" "How are you?" "Nice to see you." " (Laughter)" " Hello!" "You reached the official retiring age of 65 eleven years ago." "Since then, you've made six major series." "Does the word retirement mean anything to you?" "Not much, I have to say." "I mean..." "I'm doing what I want to do and it's just remarkable that it could be seen as being a career." "Erm..." "I mean, I'm extremely lucky that people should want me to go on doing it." "While one has breath in one's body and can get around and it's not too much of a drag and people want it, that's great." "I'm extremely lucky." "I don't know what I'd do otherwise." "The giant Arum of Borneo develops the biggest undivided leaf of all." "This is the loneliest and the coldest place on earth." "This is one of the wettest places on earth." "This is the biggest flower in the world." "This is the most massive living thing on earth." "This is the biggest creature that exists on the planet." "The biggest one that has ever existed." "The blue whale." "I can see its tail just under my boat here." "It's coming up!" "It's coming up!" "There!" "Subtitles by bongomaniac."