The David Attenborough most of us never get to see revealed by Monty Python icon Michael Palin | Exclusive

EXCLUSIVE: As Sir David Attenborough turns 99 today, there’ll be at least one famous friend helping raise a glass to toast the icon.

Sir Michael Palin, who profiled the broadcaster for Life on Air: David Attenborough’s 50 Years in Television back in 2002, tells 9honey he is “very fond of him really”.

After years of friendship, the Monty Python star provides an insight into the side of the birthday boy people rarely get to see - when the cameras are off.

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“He’s got his enthusiasm, he likes to play the piano and all that but he has got a great sense of humour and we laugh a lot,” Palin tells 9honey at the world premiere of Ocean with David Attenborough in London.

“He’s very good, he’s very warm, I’m very, very fond of him really. He’s not sort of showy, he’s not egotistical in any way.”

One thing Attenborough is though, according to Palin, is “an amazing collector”.

“He brings back a lot of wonderful objects that he finds,” the TV personality reveals on the blue carpet.

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“When we did Life On Air, he gave things to me and he’d say, ‘so what do you think this is? Is it an emu’s egg or is it a cannonball from somewhere?’ He’s [also] got a great collection of paintings.

“His interests are really wide-ranging, which I think really is part of why he is so good at what he’s doing, because he has a good world view.”

And yes, “doing” is still in the present tense as the legendary broadcaster and voice of a generation releases his newest film in time for his big birthday.

Not that it surprises his longtime friend, who jokes that he’d like Attenborough to “give up and retire” so it doesn’t make other, younger, octogenarians like himself look bad.

“I’ve ceased to be surprised by anything David does,” Palin laughs.

“The fact that he got to 80 years old – or 82, which I am now – he was still making programs, and I’ve been waiting for him to give up and retire so we can all have a nice, quiet life, and don’t have to have him setting the torch out there ever further.”

There is no rest for the wicked, with Palin and Attenborough spending birthday eve together in London at a panel event, talking about the nature documentary maker’s newest book, Ocean: Earth’s Last Wilderness.

Palin says he “shall help him celebrate” and “I hope to go and have a glass of champagne with him” at some point.

‘Still motivated by the wonder of the world’

Attenborough won a scholarship to the University of Cambridge to study geology and zoology after a childhood of collecting fossils, stones and natural specimens set him on a trajectory from a young age.

There, he earned a degree in natural sciences and eventually joined the BBC in 1952, following a stint of national service in the Navy.

At first Attenborough was a producer in the factual department after being rejected for an on-air role over the size of his teeth.

But when a presenter of Zoo Quest called in sick at the last minute, Attenborough stepped in and never looked back.

While he continued to front documentaries, Attenborough spent some time as program director of BBC Two after its launch in 1964 and is credited with establishing the network thanks to the diverse range of shows he commissioned – one of those being the sketch show Monty Python’s Flying Circus, starring Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam and Palin.

While Ocean is largely tipped to be Attenborough’s last film, Palin doesn’t think he’ll ever see his friend quit the industry entirely.

“I don’t think he would ever have given up work and ever will, because that’s the kind of guy he is,” he tells 9honey.

“He’s still motivated by the wonder of the world, by the curiosity about the world.

“He’s got this amazing team of people, really good people – BBC Bristol, the marvellous photographers, who will stay out all year to get a picture of a leaf opening up and things like that. And he’s in touch with all that and he feels it’s very important to be in touch, because it’s all knowledge, and he is very, very good at communicating it.”

It’s something the three directors of Ocean with David Attenborough agree with.

“For the last 20 years, we’ve all been saying, ‘no, this is the last one’, ‘this this is it’, ‘surely, he’ll stop now’, but he’s still going strong,” director and producer Toby Nowlan tells 9honey.

“I mean, he just has kept working, he’s such an inspiration.”

Director Keith Scholey has spent 40 years working with Attenborough and laughs at the notion they’d ever considered they would still be partnering on projects so many decades later.

“I often think about that,” he tells 9honey with a chuckle.

“If we had sort of sat back in the early 1980s and someone had come and drifted in from above and said, ‘Oh, do you know what? You’ll be at a premiere in 2025 of a film about the oceans’, you would say ‘nah’ but here we all are.”

‘Really, really emotional’

The overall message in the latest, and possibly last, Attenborough film is hopeful but it also sees its host appear very reflective.

Director Colin Butfield tells 9honey that was palpable but didn’t diminish Attenborough’s work ethic.

“This was a real passion piece for David,” Butfield tells 9honey in London.

“So on-set he was incredible, really. He had so much energy and enthusiasm, but so much research into the script.

“I’ve never really seen him quite as fired up as this. So I think that passion comes across on screen.”

Nowlan describes the project as “the biggest privilege of my career” thanks to his longtime idol and collaborator of 16 years.

“I grew up on a staple of David Attenborough, since I can remember,” he says.

“He’s the reason I’m standing here today, the reason I took this job, the reason I dreamt of working in this industry and so to be working with him so closely on this such authored, personal piece of his, is the biggest privilege of my career.

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David Attenborough’s extraordinary life in pictures

“I’ve been working with him for 16 years, so I kind of had a flavour for how amazing he is but it always surprises me with David, how humble and wonderful he is to sort of listen to other people, despite being the greatest storyteller we have, and God does he have a million stories he could tell.

“He’s travelled more than anyone else, he knows this planet better than almost anyone, but he’s the most humble guy, and he really listens to you and talks to you and that’s always just such a wonderful thing to work with.”

Asked if the working relationship is like other colleagues heading to the pub at the end of the work week to share stories, Nowlan laughs.

“Yeah, I mean, there’s elements of that,” he admits.

But the most memorable moment with the great is from their latest collaboration, the producer/director tells 9honey.

“I remember being on a cold beach in southern England on a winter’s day, and it was one or two degrees, and he was delivering these opening and closing words to the film, and they were the most powerful words I’ve ever heard him say,” he recalls.

“They were so strong about you know, after 100 years on Earth, he’s come to this conclusion that there’s nowhere more important and that if we save our sea, we save our world. And it was the way he read them, just it was really, really emotional.

“And even when we watched the film again, I welled up. It was a real moment. I really treasured that moment.”

Australian billionaire businessman Andrew Forrest, 63, helped finance the film, having grown up a huge Attenborough fan.

The broadcast icon also inspired the Fortescue mining magnate’s PhD, which he achieved in his 50s, so he couldn’t pass up the chance to work with him.

“He’s just a magnificent gentleman,” Forrest tells 9honey.

“He’s everything you imagine he is. I think he was an incisive, scientific mind and a great communicator.”

Attenborough celebrated the world premiere of the new film at the Royal Festival Hall on Tuesday evening (Wednesday AEST) with King Charles among the 2000 people in attendance.

The likes of models Cara and Poppy Delevigne, singer Geri Halliwell-Horner and actor Theo James were also there.

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