You can only get really unpopular decisions through if the electorate is convinced of the value of the environment. That's what natural history programmes should be for.

You can cry about death and very properly so, your own as well as anybody else's. But it's inevitable, so you'd better grapple with it and cope and be aware that not only is it inevitable, but it has always been inevitable, if you see what I mean.

Clearly we could devastate the world... as far as we know, the Earth is the only place in the universe where there is life. Its continued survival now rests in our hands

Apart from anything else, I am designed by evolution, like we all are: if we see a little thing like that, big eyes, tiny nose, we go 'aaah'. That's what evolution does. We are programmed to do that. So to find babies the most amazing, isn't surprising, I don't think.

I'm no longer sceptical. I no longer have any doubt at all. I think climate change is the major challenge facing the world.

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.

Do we really require so many gardening programmes, makeover programmes or celebrity chefs?