I can mention many moments that were unforgettable and revelatory. But the most single revelatory three minutes was the first time I put on scuba gear and dived on a coral reef. It's just the unbelievable fact that you can move in three dimensions.

The savage, rocky shores of Christmas Island, 200 miles south of Java, in the Indian Ocean. It's November, the moon is in its third quarter, and the sun is just setting. In a few hours from now, on this very shore, a thousand million lives will be launched.

All life is related. And it enables us to construct with confidence the complex tree that represents the history of life

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

That people will object very much to seeing a predator killing its prey, and yet, in the news, will accept showing shots of people shooting one another.

The more you go on, the less you need people standing between you and the animal and the camera waving their arms about.

If I were beginning my career today, I don't think I would take the same direction. Television is at a crossroads at the moment. And although I am not up to date technologically, I suspect that somewhere out there people are conveying things about natural history by means other than television, and I think if I were beginning today, I'd be there.