Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Naturalist and TV presenter best known for presenting Springwatch and Autumnwatch.
On the island
Eight records
I remember being dragged by my parents away from my Christmas presents in 1972 to my Uncle John's and Auntie Barbara's very suburban house. Christmas Top of the Pops came on and David Bowery was performing Starman. He looked amazing. He had this sort of emaciated body with this sparkling harlequin costume, this great shock of ginger mane hair. And every adult in the room hated him. And I thought he looked magnificent, so exciting. A couple of years later, he released Rebel Rebel, and the riff in this is, well, it's just amazing.
When I was asked to choose my eight pieces, I thought I'm just going to go for the pop tunes that I've liked and have been important one way or another in my life. And T Rex's Twentieth Century Boy starts with a bang and put a bang into my life in the seventies.
Well, over the years everyone's tried to produce the perfect pop song, but it was a bunch of scruffy kids in Derry that for me and many others made the most perfect pop song.
Shout Above the NoiseFavourite
Well, as I say, the alienation which my obsessive interest in natural history had already generated from my peers meant that I I wasn't part of the gang, I didn't get to go to their parties, you know, I felt excluded and I was pretty miffed about this. And I wanted a separating mechanism, and Punk, what was that separating mechanism? A couple of years later, you know I'd really got into the scene, a band called Penetration released their second album, but on it was a track called Shout Above the Noise. And this one track has been the mantra for my entire life.
The Jesus and Mary Chain, I always say, have provided the soundtrack of my life. They produced some remarkable music. To many people, it's an obnoxious wall of sound with screaming feedback. But woven beneath it are very delicate, pretty pop songs. And that's sort of a contrast of the violence and the prettiness or the beauty. That's what's been going on in my head. So I'm always happy when it rains.
A few years ago I had the great privilege of working with Billy Bragg, and I was forced to ask him to stay late to help me get a beginning to our film. And my suggestion was that he would be busking for me. So at midnight, on this cold evening, he opened up his guitar case, put down his hat, and said to me, What would you like me to play? That was my moon landing moment when Billy Bragg says to you you can have any song you like in a private acoustic performance in a subway.
I like Girlfriend in a Coma because it's so obtuse. So here you've got a pop song which starts off with this sort of rinky-dink, playful tune, and then all of a sudden there's a girlfriend in a coma, which is about as bad as it can get. And I suppose that I can dedicate this to my very um important catalogue of girlfriends that I've had over the year who I've bored into comas on many occasions by talking way too much about birds, cars, poodles or perverse letters in Viz magazines.
And now, rather strangely, my dogs sing along to it. Every time they hear the first couple of bars, they burst into howling voice. And my mother would occasionally say, Let's get the dogs to sing. So I'd get my phone out and I'd put the tune on and they would howl away. And this caused her great myrrh. And she died a couple of years ago, three years ago. And she had a natural burial. We Megan and myself waited behind when everyone else had left the graveside with the dogs that had had special permission to come. And I got the phone out and put the tune on and the dogs howled. And it was a perfect send-off.
In conversation
Presenter asks
3:02Can you distill why you think [the rarest sight in the British countryside is a child]?
I'm afraid it's down to the adults, and we've painted a picture of the countryside as a dark and dirty and dangerous place to be, and it's none of those things. It's a place where a child can have an encounter and ignite a spark which will fuel a lifetime of interest in the most beautiful things that we have on the planet. And if they don't have that affinity, they won't be as keen to look after it as people like myself are.
Presenter asks
4:46What was your very first brush with nature?
My parents say it was crawling around on the lawn of our very small house in Southampton and picking up ladybirds, putting them into matchboxes.
Presenter asks
5:41What was the fascination? What was it stirring in you when you looked at [nature]?
I think in those days it was the simplicity of nature's perfection. When I looked at ladybirds, for instance, on the tip of my finger, poised to take to the air, they all looked immaculate. They were symmetrical. None of them had lost limbs. They were neat. Everything they had seemed to have a purpose and a function, and they never failed.
The keepsakes
The luxury
just so that I could get the very best views of everything that I'd be looking at on my desert island.
Presenter asks
12:17How did you come to raise a kestrel?
Well, I went out and I found a nest, and on June 26, 1975, about 2:15, I climbed to it and I removed one of the youngsters illegally.
Presenter asks
13:12Can you explain more about what the bird meant to you? You said it was the first thing that you learned to love.
Well the relationship between man and bird is very different than between man and dog. It's an animal that you coax into a tameness. You never extract the wildness from the bird and you can't touch them. So you have to give everything to it in order to get it to work for you, which in this case is to fly free and come back and sit on your hand and so on and so forth.
Presenter asks
17:11Are you most comfortable when you're alone with nature?
I think so. … I've enjoyed some very rich human relationships, but those that I get from animals, either those that I have contact with in terms of kestrel and pets, my dogs, or those which I share through observation, are pure and they're honest. They're uncompromising.
“I think in those days it was the simplicity of nature's perfection. When I looked at ladybirds, for instance, on the tip of my finger, poised to take to the air, they all looked immaculate. They were symmetrical. None of them had lost limbs. They were neat. Everything they had seemed to have a purpose and a function, and they never failed.”
“If you stick your neck out, you've got to expect to have your head cut off from time to time.”
“I've enjoyed some very rich human relationships, but those that I get from animals, either those that I have contact with in terms of kestrel and pets, my dogs, or those which I share through observation, are pure and they're honest. They're uncompromising.”