Why David Attenborough, 93, is only 'mildly worried' about coronavirus

Sir David Attenborough's latest documentary has been put on hold until later in the year. Photo / Getty Images

At 10pm one recent Sunday evening, Sir David Attenborough received a knock at the door of his Richmond home. It was a concerned neighbour who had just read on Twitter that the veteran broadcaster was dead.

"My daughter answered the door and the neighbour asked if it was true," the 93-year-old recounts with a devilish twinkle in his eye. "She said: 'Wait there and I'll go and ask him.' I was watching the news on television."

During the panicked age of Covid-19, Attenborough's name is one of a number of national treasures to be bandied around social media in recent days as the latest to succumb to the virus. But when we meet in a London hotel shortly before the country started to go into lockdown, he is full of vim and vigour and comfortingly dismissive of the whole damn thing.

"We don't need to think that if you catch coronavirus you might as well jump into the grave and pull the grass over yourself," he says. "If you're old like me or if you have some respiratory problems, it's going to be quite serious - but at the same time we need to keep a sense of proportion."

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And what of his own safety, being firmly lodged as he is at the top end of the "at-risk" group? "I'm mildly worried, yes. But, believe me, at 93, something is eventually going to come along anyway."

We are here to discuss Attenborough's latest venture, David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet, which was due to be premiered at the Royal Albert Hall next month but now, like every aspect of normal life, has been put on hold until later in the year. The film (his latest Netflix collaboration) casts Attenborough as the central character reflecting on his extraordinary career. He describes it in another way, as a "witness statement" to the biodiversity he has been privileged to experience, and the tragedy of all that has been lost over the course of his lifetime.

The film follows Attenborough from the very beginning of his television career, sailing shirtless, bronzed and carefree over some distant ocean to the silver, though still marvellously spry, figure we see today. Over the decades the once pristine forests and coral reefs he first visited have been hacked away and bleached by warming seas and the exotic species he travelled the world to discover have been pushed to the very brink by humanity.

"What animates me is the gravity of the situation," Attenborough says of his desire to make the film.

By nature, Attenborough says, he is not an especially reflective person, preferring instead to always focus on the next project, hence his continuing prodigious output. He admits this can sometimes become a slight bone of contention with his daughter, Susan, who lives with him at his home. "My daughter is a reticent child," he says. "She does occasionally tell me to remember I'm 93. I say: 'Yes, dear, thank you, dear ...'