Before the wildlife films, David Attenborough ran BBC Two and commissioned Monty Python
David Attenborough is known for his hushed, semi-whispered narration of the natural world, but in 1965 he became the controller of BBC Two. He scrapped its kangaroo mascot, commissioned Monty Python's Flying Circus and Civilisation, and put snooker on air because its coloured balls showed off the new colour television. He later nudged tennis toward yellow balls.
He had joined television almost by accident. After naval service and a dull job editing children's science textbooks, he applied in 1950 to be a BBC radio producer and was turned down. His application caught the eye of Mary Adams, who ran factual programmes for the young television service, even though Attenborough, like most Britons, had no set and had watched just one programme. She took him on but discouraged him from appearing on screen, because she thought his teeth were too big.
Chance put him in front of the camera anyway. Working with Jack Lester, reptile curator at London Zoo, he planned a series following an animal-collecting expedition. Lester fell ill, and Attenborough stepped in as presenter of Zoo Quest in 1954. When the BBC set up its Natural History Unit in Bristol in 1957, he declined to leave London and formed his own travel and exploration department instead.
Management pulled him away from filming. Under his watch BBC Two mixed arts, comedy, sport and science, often in a single evening, and Kenneth Clark's 13-part Civilisation became the template for big, authored documentary series. Attenborough had a clause in his contract letting him keep making the odd programme, and he filmed elephants in Tanzania. He also admitted authorising the wiping of old broadcasts to save money, which he came to regret. When his name came up in 1972 for the job of running the whole BBC, he told his brother Richard he had no appetite for it and quit early the next year to make Life on Earth.
His love of nature started early. Growing up in Leicester, where his father ran the university college, he collected fossils and at about 11 sold newts to the zoology department at threepence each, without mentioning that he caught them in a pond right beside the building. He remains the only person to win BAFTAs in black-and-white, colour, HD, 3D and 4K.
Source: David Attenborough
