MY BIGGEST REGRET

Sir David Attenborough at 91 The nature lover still has one species to explore – his family writes TIFFANY DUNK

For more than 60 years Sir David Attenborough’s reassuringly familiar narration has enthralled audiences young and old as he explores the hidden wonders of the world around us.

The legendary naturalist and broadcaster has traversed the globe, clambering up mountains and descending into oceans.

And while his extraordinary documentaries have continued to break ground in filmmaking and he is hailed as a British national treasure, these adventures have

come at a price: David, 91, says both he and his family have missed out during the years he’s spent on the road.

Sitting down for an emotional interview with fellow documentary maker Louis Theroux earlier this month, David reveals his greatest regret is missing watching his kids grow up.

Talking to father-of-three Louis – he has sons Albert, 11, Frederick, nine, and two-year-old Walter – David says he knows he missed many magical milestones for his children Robert and Susan – now in their 60s –and it’s something that still gives him pause.

“When my children were the same age as your children, I was away for three months at a time,” he tells Louis, 47.

“If you have a child of six or eight and you miss three months of his or her life, it’s irreplaceable – you miss something. And I did.”

David’s wife Jane became the bedrock of the family unit, he recalls. The pair wed in 1950 and until her death in 1997, he relied on her to balance his time away from home. “My dear wife was very understanding about it. Perhaps you can’t have your cake and eat it.”

So frequent were his absences that he became the butt of good-natured jibes around the dinner table.

“Well, there used to be family jokes. You know, ‘ You were never there. You don’t remember that, Father, do you, because you weren’t there!’”

Still, spending time away from his young kids is one of the very few regrets David has in his adventure-filled life, which he says has been “extraordinary”.

While he admits thoughts of his own mortality have become increasingly frequent, saying “it’s more and more likely I’m going to die tomorrow” – the acclaimed nature lover says he has no plans to slow down. Not now, nor in the foreseeable future.

“I don’t have a plan – except to keep doing what I want to do,” he insists. “And if people ask, well, it’s perfectly simple: If I wanted to put my feet up and sit in the corner and slobber, then I could.

“But I mean, who wouldn’t be grateful for people coming up and saying, ‘Would you like to go to Trinidad?’ I say, ‘ Yes, what will it cost?’ ‘No, no,’ they reply, ‘We’ll pay you!’ Really? Lucky old me!”

In addition to not slowing down on the work front, David’s also determined to keep living as he always has.

Well, except for one crucial ingredient: He’s had to cut back on his one vice – chocolate!

“I was eating too much of it,” he says of why he’s had to lay off his favourite treat. “I could easily eat half a pound [more than a 200g standard block] of Cadbury’s Fruit & Nut at a sitting without noticing. And I suddenly thought, ‘This is ridiculous. You’ve got to stop it.’ I’ve had chocolate-flavoured cake or whatever, but I haven’t had a bar of chocolate – not even a square – since mid-november.”

David still plays the piano every day.

“I play the same stuff and I make the same mistakes,” he says. “I know I make the same mistakes, because some of the stuff I fish out is music I played as a teenager, and there are all the marks of the teachers, underlining things! Every now and again I break free and look at a new Haydn sonata or something.”

Throughout the interview, David is refreshingly warm and down-to-earth – just like he appears on our TV screens. So it’s no surprise he’s incredibly humble when asked by Louis what it feels like to be called a national treasure.

“It’s easy to be a national treasure if you don’t have to do controversial things,” David declares.

“My stock-in-trade is appreciated by kids of seven and professors of 70 and everything in between.

“All I have to do is not get in between the animal and the camera too often.”

‘There used to be family jokes. “You were never there, Father” ’