A majestic creature… and an eagle.

I was going to do a blog about the Occupy Wall Street and Occupy London but I need to do some more reading about what they are protesting about. So instead, after a conversation with someone at work, I thought I would write one about Sir David Attenborough instead.

People go on about national institutions, like Stephen Fry, but I feel the true voice of the nation, the person who truly embodies the best of what it is to come from this island, is Sir David.

Other nations must be sick as pigs if they get Oprah Winfrey narrating a programme that was previously narrated by Sir David Attenborough. I remember I wrote a comedy sketch once all about how a man had his entire life narrated by Sir David, but thinking about it now, makes me feel slightly blasphemous to have done that.

There is a clear reason why I can say, without any shame, that I love Sir David Attenborough, and that is because ostensibly I have grown up with him. I remember having had my bath as a kid, I would get into my Knightrider pajamas, run downstairs, drink some cocoa and watch whatever Attenborough programme was on with my dad. It was like watching a programme narrated by a fictional granddad. If he was in Africa, my dad would regale me with tales of his childhood.

Unlike the other presenters on stuff like this, he rarely anthropomorphized the creatures. He just described their actions in regards to survival. Unlike cack like March of the Penguins, humanizing them and their mating for life business. A colleague at work got upset about how some Orca bosched up a Minky Whale, saying how they were the bastards of the sea. I pointed out that if they didn’t kill that one Minky, 6 of them could have died. Just because the Minky is some kind of sea hippy, whilst the Orca’s are some sort of capitalist scumbags. No, it is just survival of the fittest. Sir David taught me that at a young age, when some pride of lions tore a zebra apart.

I don’t think I would be exaggerating if I said I think he is in the top 5 people who have shaped my world view. His focus on science, and rigor, and how important it is for all of us to care for the wildlife in this world.

People have tried to misappropriate his programmes. One showed a hummingbird moth that had evolved to feast on a specific orchid in a rainforest. Intelligent Design lobbyist went on about how that wasn’t coincidence, and how a designer must have been involved. How beautiful and great god was to make such an interlocking puzzle. Sir David was wonderfully pithy in his response.

‘When intelligent design lobbyists go on about the designer, it is always the beautiful examples. They never talk about the fly that lays its larvae in the eyes of children in Africa, larvae that blind them. What creator would make it so?’

His latest series, Frozen Planet, started with an image of the 85 year old in Antarctica, at the south pole, talking about how fleeting and precious the poles were. In a week when ‘TV legend’ Jimmy Saville passed away at 82, there he was, in minus 20 degrees, talking to camera about our place in the world. In that inimitable voice of his, the gravity and fear of the situation was transmitted without pomp or circumstance. Rather than the over the top orchestral accompaniment that seems to be key to every nature programme now a days, I would much rather we just had Sir David’s voice and the images, because they are staggering (the images…not his voice, although he gets your attention by just saying WOLVES).

I could prattle on about this all day. If I could meet one person alive at the moment, it would be a toss up between him and Dennis Bergkamp, but I would choose Sir David. And I know that the day he actually shuffles off this mortal coil, will be probably one of the worst days of my life. I will undoubtedly cry. But I leave you with a great man himself. When asked once what his favourite mammal in the world was, he said,

‘women.’

Absolute legend!

- Anand