They always mean beautiful things like hummingbirds. I always reply by saying that I think of a little child in east Africa with a worm burrowing through his eyeball. The worm cannot live in any other way, except by burrowing through eyeballs. I find that hard to reconcile with the notion of a divine and benevolent creator.

Steve Irwin did wonderful conservation work but I was uncomfortable about some of his stunts. Even if animals aren't aware that you are not treating them with respect, the viewers are.

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.

Life is not all high emotion. Some of the most interesting things are when its not highly emotional: little details of relationships and body language.

Before the BBC, I joined the Navy in order to travel.

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

What I am interested in with birds, just as I am with spiders or monkeys, is what they do and why they do it.