I get Indian ring-necked parakeets in my garden every morning. There's a big colony living wild down the road. There might be some out there now. |
I haven't-touch wood-had a stomach upset for 15 or 20 years. |
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. |
I just wish the world was twice as big and half of it was still unexplored. |
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. |
I mean, it is an extraordinary thing that a large proportion of your country and my country, of the citizens, never see a wild creature from dawn 'til dusk, unless it's a pigeon, which isn't really wild, which might come and settle near them. |
I mean, one is living an amazingly privileged life. It's only been the last 20 or so years that one could have possibly gone to all the places you and I go to. |
I once had aspirations to be an anthropologist, and I know from anthropology that people will not accept difficult political instructions or governmental decisions from somebody who is totally divorced from them. If it doesn't speak the same language, it's no good. |
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. |
I suffer much less than many of my colleagues. I am perfectly able to go to Australia and film within three hours of arrival. |
I think there will be radical changes. But I don't actually think that within the next 100 years the natural world will be reduced to rats and cockroaches, nor do I think that the plant world will be reduced to some kind of desert. |
I'm a very old BBC hand. |
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. |
I'm coming towards the end of the shelf. |
I'm especially involved, for example, in the Richmond Environmental Centre. That's one of those things you can hardly say no to. |