David Attenborough, voice of nature programmes, celebrates 100th birthday

The BBC is hosting a party for David Attenborough at the Royal Albert Hall. Cinemas are playing his nature films. Friends have spent weeks lavishing praise on the man and his work.

 

But the world’s most famous wildlife presenter is likely to be uncomfortable with all the attention as he celebrates his 100th birthday on Friday, said Alastair Fothergill, the producer of some of Attenborough’s most well-known documentaries. “He’s always been very clear to all of us that work with him: Remember, the animals are the stars, I’m not, Fothergill told AP.

 

Glorious gorillas

 

But Attenborough has had to accept the accolades this week as scientists, politicians and conservationists celebrated the man who has brought frolicking gorillas, breaching whales and tiny poisonous frogs into living rooms around the world for more than 70 years. Through BBC programs such as Life on Earth, The Private Life of Plants and The Blue Planet, Attenborough has illuminated the beauty, ferocity and sometimes downright weirdness of nature in a hushed melodic voice that conveys his own awe at what he is witnessing. Viewers who might never leave their hometowns were transported to the Himalayas, the Amazon and the unexplored forests of Papua New Guinea. But behind the stunning images was an attention to scientific accuracy that helped teach people about complex subjects like evolution.

 

 

And as the evidence mounted, he began to sound the alarm about climate change, ocean plastic and other human-caused threats to the planet.

 

Fond of fossils 

 

Born in London on May 8, 1926, the same year as the late Queen Elizabeth II, Attenborough was raised on the grounds of what is now the University of Leicester, where his father was a senior leader.

 

His fascination with nature developed when he was a young boy, riding his bicycle into the surrounding countryside where he collected treasures such as abandoned birds’ nests, the shed skin of a snake and, most importantly, fossils.

 

“I’d find a fossil and show it to my father, and he’d say Good, good, tell me all about it.’ So I responded and became my own expert,” Attenborough told Smithsonian Magazine in 1981.

 

He went on to study geology and zoology at the University of Cambridge. In 1952, Attenborough joined the BBC, working behind the scenes on “everything from ballet to short stories.” After he’d been there about two months, the capture of a “living fossil” off the coast of East Africa caused an international stir, and he was asked to produce a short piece about the coelacanth.

 

But Attenborough thought television could do more. In 1954, he finally persuaded the BBC to let him accompany a London Zoo team that travelled to West Africa to collect specimens. That began a decade as host and producer of “Zoo Quest,” kick-starting his career in the field.

 

The privilege of his life

 

One of the most famous moments of that long career came during the 1979 series “Life on Earth,” when Attenborough encountered a family of mountain gorillas in a forest on the border of Rwanda and what was then Zaire (now Congo).

 

“Extraordinary, really,’’ he reflected. “It was one of the most privileged moments of my life.”