Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Naturalist and BAFTA-winning broadcaster known for presenting nature series like Deadly Sixty and Blue Planet Live and for extreme adventures.
On the island
Eight records
I can remember after we'd sat around the bonfire chatting, I got into my hammock and I, you know, put my headphones in and I listened to this song and I just punched the air.
I have incredibly fond memories of sitting around the bonfire with my parents and particularly my dad playing the guitar and singing songs.
I was in my early 20s and I tried to walk across New Guinea... I failed catastrophically... And my one bit of company was my Walkman and the cassette that I had inside it, which was the greatest album ever made, The Bends, by Radiohead. And I could choose any single song from that album, but I've gone for this one, Fake Plastic Trees.
I find music incredibly powerful as a way of turning my mood the way that I would like it to go, particularly if I'm feeling lonely, or sad, or down. I can listen to certain tracks and I can make that just go away. And this is the track that, you know, for decades now, I've used for that exact purpose.
500 MilesFavourite
The most perfect day of my life, here I am, massive cliché, was my wedding day... And then, at about half, four, five o'clock in the morning, as the sun was just coming up and the light was illuminating the sky behind St. Michael's Mount, we sat round a bonfire. And my dear friends, Rachel and Ash took up a guitar and started singing and sung this song.
In my tent the night after my close call in Bhutan, I sat down on my own with a bottle of scotch and I listened to some of my favourite but most poignant tunes and this one is definitely the most melancholy.
I left her a treasure trail around the house... And one of those things was an iPod with some headphones and just one song on it. And it was this. Wretch 32, six words.
So this comes from the first night that Helen and I spent in our first house together. It was completely bare of furniture... And it was the most content I have ever been in my life, jiving along to this life by vampire weekend.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:10What is that feeling like [of discovery and being first]?
There's something quite unique to the moment where you walk into a cave and your torch illuminates darkness that has never before seen light... That sense of being the first, of placing the first ever footprint on a mountaintop or alongside a jungle river is something that I have been lucky enough to do many times in my career and it is just the most extraordinary experience.
Presenter asks
2:56Tell me about the amazing discovery in a cave system in Borneo.
Yeah, Borneo is a very special place to me... we found caves which were unmapped and emblazoned on the walls were handprints which had been left there by our ancestors at least 40,000 years ago... it just absolutely blew our minds.
Presenter asks
6:16Has the anthropause made a difference to the natural world around you at home?
It made a colossal difference on my river... During lockdown, all of a sudden we went from being one of the busiest navigations in the country to being totally silent. And my portion of the Thames was transformed into what appeared to be a wildlife refuge. Every single night we were treated with these velvet calm waters and wonderful sunsets. All of the nesting birds... have had unparalleled success. And it did feel like a time when nature was given a chance to surge forward.
The keepsakes
The book
Gabriel García Márquez
because it has so much magic, so much mystery, and it's probably the book that I can reread most over and over again and still find new wonder in.
The luxury
I've always been a little bit disappointed that I never learnt how to play a musical instrument. So I'm gonna take a guitar. I will probably be just as bad as my dad. So when that happens and when I'm rubbish, I can smash it up, use it for firewood and use the strings to catch fish.
Presenter asks
7:34Are your children of an age where you can introduce them to the natural world?
It has been a wild, wailing lockdown for me... But Logan, my oldest, who is two very soon, he really has switched on to nature and wildlife... his favorite phrase in the world is dragonfly lava... And he has massively connected with nature.
Presenter asks
16:32Why do you think Deadly 60 has been so successful?
When I came up with the original idea that led to Deadly, I was very, very calculating about what I wanted it to achieve. And that was a universality of appeal... I use the stuff that everybody is interested in... the idea was always to kind of snag into as many people as possible and switch them on to wildlife.
Presenter asks
22:27Tell me about the day you almost drowned kayaking in Bhutan.
We were making the first descent of a river in the Himalayas in Bhutan... I dropped down into this kind of gullet of churning white water... I was held in the rapid for about four and a half minutes... I was drowning. This was how it was going to end. Enough time to process that I wouldn't get to see Logan grow up, that I was never going to see Helen again.
“There's something quite unique to the moment where you walk into a cave and your torch illuminates darkness that has never before seen light... That sense of being the first... is something that I have been lucky enough to do many times in my career and it is just the most extraordinary experience.”
“we found caves which were unmapped and emblazoned on the walls were handprints which had been left there by our ancestors at least 40,000 years ago... it just absolutely blew our minds.”
“I was held in the rapid for about four and a half minutes... I was drowning. This was how it was going to end. Enough time to process that I wouldn't get to see Logan grow up, that I was never going to see Helen again.”
“There's something very liberating about getting a sense of being close to death because it kind of gives you such a greater appreciation of all you have to live for.”
“I'd sort of thundered around the planet, desperately doing all these crazy things in an attempt to find out what I was put here for. And then found it in something as simple as becoming a dad.”
“That ability to kind of reset myself and find something good and positive in every sunrise and every sunset has done big things for me.”