I'm watching a DVD with my daughter the other day. I bought her the Life Collection DVD Box set. She is 5. It cost me £55. She's already watched The Blue Planet and Planet Earth on DVD. In fact both of them many times. Thats why I bought the Life Box. We picked one of the 24 DVDs almost at random. Actually I think she liked the picture of the frog on the DVD. We are watching it. I'm not paying that much attention until David starts to talk about frogs in the desert and how they conserve water. He proceeds to squeeze some water from this frog and drink it. I'm agog. I'm thinking never mind the life of frogs, somebody should document the behavior of this guy. How could he? Its then that the idea crystallized for me. I'm going to watch this Life Box and see what I can learn about life. I'm going to set aside a week or however long it takes and try and get through the lot. I'll write a blog to document what I learn. Maybe there's a book at the end of it all. My mind starts to wander on this. I'll call it "Everything I learned about life, I learned from David Attenborough". Catchy title.
Tonight I'm going to read the Wikipedia entry about David. I realise I don't know that much about him, though he's been like a distant relative in my life. Never further away than the TV or the remote control. The first of the DVD box sets, "Life on Earth" was broadcast in 1979 - when I was twelve. I bet I watched it with my mum and dad. In those days there were only 2 or maybe 3 channels, and as I recall we spent most evenings in front of the telly.
He always seemed like a really nice guy. The kind of guy you should go to for advice and not just about what types of frogs give up the most water, for lots of things. What I didn't realize was that he is the younger brother of the actor Richard Attenborough. I suppose I should have guessed that but I swear no one ever mentioned it and I don't usually assume everyone with the same name is related to one another. One thing I did know, that not a lot of people knew, was that he was very high up (in a managerial sense) in the BBC. This always seemed a bit odd to me. In the sense of "how come the Director of Programming at the BBC lands a job travelling all over the world seeing all its natural wonders". I told a few people about this in the past and they didn't believe me, but its true.
As I was reading it occured to me that I better check whether someone has already done what Im planning to do. So I checked a few websites but all I came up with was a guy listing "collecting and watching all David Attenborough's documentaries as one of his goals". According to the website this was one of about 30 goals he had set himself, none of which apparently he has accomplished. Other great things he hasnt yet accomplished include"random acts of kindness" ( I guess either he hasn't been kind or all the acts of kindness have been painstakingly planned); "see a tiger in the wild", "be a hippie for a month" and, if you can believe it, "create a database driven website". Reading this guys entries Im thinking 1) what a wanker, 2) I've done half the things you are still dreaming about and 3) Im going to see this Life Box thing to the bitter end. I dont want to end up as a list of 30 things I dreamed of doing but never actually did.
The other thing I came across was the fact that David himself (should I call him Sir David?) had done a series of 20 radio shows (10 minutes each) called Life Stories which mix natural history topics with him talking about his life experiences. So I guess I'll have to listen to that too. Im drawing the line there though, or this could go on forever. I started with the 60 hours of the Life Box and in the course of deciding to do it Ive already added two more box sets and 3 hours of podcast. Enough is enough. If I cant learn something about life from that lot then what is the point.
Returning to the wikipedia entry for David I was amused to learn that some scientist had named a reptile after David. The Attenborosaurus conybeari was previously thought to be a type of Pleisiosaur and hence named Pleisiosaurus conybeari. Who would have known the creature was actually a type of Attenborough. Apparently there are also four living creatures of the genus Attenborough including a Long-beaked Echidna from Papua New Guinea no less. Oh and his brother Richard (Attenborosaurus luviness perhaps?).
Wikipedia also informs me that David has been voted the "most trusted celebrity" and is in the "top 10 heros of our time" from the New Statesman. Oddly wikipedia also quotes someone as saying David might be the "most traveled person on the planet". Surely that particular title must go to some airline pilot? Well if we are talking miles covered. Or maybe if its measured in terms of places visited it might be true. I wonder if he carbon offsets? I bet he does. I wonder how much he would owe if he went retrospective? He's probably one of the things that caused climate change.
Usefully Wikipedia has a top 20 David Attenborough TV moments for me too look out for. This includes sugestions from Bill Oddie "Attenborough watching a ladybird mimicking various noises" and Bjork "Attenborough being threatened by a bull elephant seal". No one, I repeat no one, mentioned the desert frog incident. I start to wonder how they compile these lists. Did Bjork really offer "threatening bull seal" without ptompting when someone from the BBC phoned her up? Or is it pick from a list and "by the way Bill Oddie has already chosen the ladybird noise thingy" but there are plently of others. I bet its the latter.
The rest of the Wiki entry is about David's environmental views (pretty traditional); religion (he's agnostic, not atheist. Not surprisingly has some interesting observations on those who point to orchids or humming birds as evidence of "intelligent design" but forget to mention parasitic worms, boring into the eyballs of children, in West Africa - I look forward to that episode; and public service brodcasting (guess what - he is pro BBC).
Well the alcohol is almost done. Tomorrow I start with episode one from Life on Earth - "the Infinite Variety" and lots of coffee. My last act of the night is to buy David's autobiography which I'm surprised to learn can be bought for £0.01 from Amazon Market Place. With £2.75 postage and packaging. How ridiculous is that? The guy I buy from has 100% feedback from >200,000 people. You would have thought someone would have complained about paying £2.75 postage for a book worth £0.01. But then I guess David's book is worth more than £0.01. So who cares about the ridiculous £2.75 anyway. Actually I lied. My last act of the night was to take the quiz on the "Life on Air" BBC page:
I got 5 out of 8. Not bad. But then I probably would have got 4 out of 8 just by guessing. Lets see how do at the end of the week.
No comments:
Post a Comment