Children start off reading in books about lions and giraffes and so on, but they also-if theyre lucky enough and have reasonable privileges of any human being-are able to go into a garden and turn over stone and see a worm and see a slug and see an ant.

There is no question that climate change is happening; the only arguable point is what part humans are playing in it.

I think the most alarming animals I have encountered are really poisonous snakes.

Getting to places like Bangkok or Singapore was a hell of a sweat. But when you got there it was the back of beyond. It was just a series of small tin sheds.

I've been bitten by a python. Not a very big one. I was being silly, saying: 'Oh, it's not poisonous' Then, wallop! But you have fear around animals.

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.

In the old days... it was a basic, cardinal fact that producers didn't have opinions. When I was producing natural history programmes, I didn't use them as vehicles for my own opinion. They were factual programmes.