David Attenborough at 97: ‘He still works harder than most of us – seven days a week’

Published

3 months ago

February 25, 2024

admin

At 97, Sir David Attenborough is a man still happy to crawl on his belly through wet grass to get his shot.

For his latest Sky Nature project, Secret World Of Sound, the world-renowned naturalist and broadcaster explores the ways that animals hear and produce sound, using cutting-edge technology to record noises from nature – with some captured on film for the first time.

Attenborough’s long-time collaborator, and the show’s series producer, Sharmila Choudhury tells The Climate Show: “David keeps us on our toes. He sets the bar very high. And that’s a good thing.

“I think he work still works harder than most of us, usually seven days a week… When he commits himself to something, he gives it 100%.”

Joining the team for filming in the Wye Valley in Monmouth to capture the song of a wild dipper, Attenborough found himself lying on the damp ground hoping that the small bird would show up.

Truly at one with nature, he didn’t have long to wait.

Choudhury explains: “He crawled through the grass to get into the best position, and was all up for it… We didn’t want to leave him lying in the wet grass for hours.

“Miraculously, and this often happens when David arrives on location, the sun suddenly burst through the clouds.

“The dipper flew in. David smiled and delivered his lines of what he wanted to say, you know, smoothly in one go. It’s amazing.”

‘It hits you in the core’

For the same episode, Attenborough explains how bees are struggling with modern fertilisers and climate change.

Choudhury says: “Him looking straight to camera and delivering a message like that is so powerful. It literally hits you in the core.”

Calling him an “inspiration,” and praising his “unrivalled” breadth of knowledge, she adds: “And he obviously has a fabulous voice and style of delivery, which is the cherry on the cake of any natural history program.”

A three-part series, the documentary studies animal behaviour, breaking the sounds they make down into four functions – finding a mate, looking after young, hunting for food or avoiding becoming prey.

Technology worthy of 007

Some of the technology used in the series was borrowed from other walks of life, while other bits of kit were of true James Bond status.

Choudhury says: “We used everything from the tiniest microphone the size of your fingernail, that you could put inside a bird nest or a beehive, to super sensitive hydrophones that you can put underwater to record, the faintest communications between fish.

“There were also a couple of, gadgets that were actually developed for other industries – the gas industry, or for espionage purposes, that we thought might help us to listen in on sounds that we don’t normally get to hear.”

One of those gadgets was the laser vibrometer – a machine which shoots out a laser beam to detect any vibrations caused by noise and amplifies them, so they are audible to the human ear.

It was used to capture the love song of a pair of amorous treehoppers in Costa Rica.

While sound was the focus of the documentary, another theme became impossible to ignore while filming.

‘Every single shoot was impacted by climate change’

Choudhury says: “The biggest challenge, without any doubt, was climate change. It’s something that we’ve seen creep in on us over the years.

“I’ve been making wildlife films for over 30 years. And in the last decade or so, more and more shoots have been impacted by climate change.

“That means animals that would have been predictable in their movements, say, their migrations or where they would be, or the time of year they’d be breeding, are not doing the usual things anymore.

“It started off with one or two parts of the world, or one or two shoots being affected by this. But on this particular series, every single shoot was impacted by climate change.

“That made filming very difficult, and it was very distressing to see the animals suffering in this new world.”

‘The elephants were so stressed’

One example was the team’s trip to Amboseli National Park in Kenya to film elephants.

The plan had been to shoot a story about how mothers and babies communicate with each other – but when they arrived following Kenya’s worst drought in 40 years, they found the elephants in an awful plight.

“The elephants were behaving very differently to before. They had split up into tiny herds and every night they would go out of the park to surrounding fields to try and find some food.

“Every morning they would walk back into the waterhole in the middle of the park, and they would walk single file heads down, absolutely dejected. They didn’t make a single sound.

“The animals were so stressed, they had no energy left to talk to each other effectively.

“After we left, Kenya and Amboseli experienced the worst deaths of wildlife, including elephants, recorded history and that was clearly a result of climate change.”

‘Buy the coral reefs a little time’

But there was some hope amid the devastation being caused to the natural world by the climate crisis – and this was very much set in the world of sound.

During filming, the team discovered an Australian scientist whose research had found that by playing the sound of a healthy coral reef at the site of a dying reef it could help regenerate it and bring back some of the fish.

Click to subscribe to ClimateCast with Tom Heap wherever you get your podcasts

Choudhury explains: “They are hopeful that they might be able to buy coral reefs a little bit of time whilst we tackle climate change.

“It won’t be a solution in the long run because the reef will continue to die off if the oceans continue to warm. But it’s a little ray of hope, at a time when we so badly needed.”

Watch the full interview with Sharmila Choudhury on The Climate Show with Tom Heap, Saturday and Sunday at 3.30 and 7.30pm on Sky News.

Secret World Of Sound With David Attenborough is streaming on Sky Nature and NOW.

Entertainment

Dabney Coleman, actor who starred in Boardwalk Empire and 9 to 5, dies

Published

4 hours ago

May 18, 2024

admin

Dabney Coleman, actor who starred in Boardwalk Empire and 9 to 5, dies

Lily Tomlin, Morgan Fairchild and Ben Stiller have led tributes to “one-of-a-kind” actor Dabney Coleman following his death aged 92.

Coleman made his career playing comedic villains, mean-spirited bosses and villains in films including 9 to 5 and Tootsie, as well as playing Commodore Louis Kaestner in Boardwalk Empire.

Lily Tomlin, who starred alongside him in 9 To 5 with Jane Fonda and Dolly Parton, said: “We just loved him.”

In her post to X, the actress shared a photo of her character Violet Newstead dressed in a Snow White costume beside a tense-looking Coleman as her egotistical boss Franklin Hart Jr.

Morgan Fairchild, who starred in Falcon Crest and Friends, described Coleman as a “great one”.

“So very sorry to hear of the death of the wonderful #DabneyColeman”, she wrote on X alongside a black and white photo of them together.

“We went out for a bit in the ’80s and I adored him. This town has lost one of a kind!”

Coleman “took his last earthly breath peacefully and exquisitely” in his Santa Monica home on Thursday, his daughter said in a statement on Friday on behalf of the family.

“My father crafted his time here on Earth with a curious mind, a generous heart and a soul on fire with passion, desire and humour that tickled the funny bone of humanity”, she said.

“As he lived, he moved through this final act of his life with elegance, excellence and mastery.”

Ben Stiller, Zoolander and Meet The Parents actor, praised Coleman for paving the way for character actors.

“The great Dabney Coleman literally created, or defined, really – in a uniquely singular way – an archetype as a character actor.

“He was so good at what he did it’s hard to imagine movies and television of the last 40 years without him.”

Coleman starred in a number of films and TV series in the 1960s, then made his breakthrough as a corrupt mayor in the satirical soap opera Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, in 1976.

His film credits include a computer scientist in WarGames, Tom Hanks’ father in You’ve Got Mail and a chief firefighter in The Towering Inferno.

He won a best actor Golden Globe for The Slap Maxwell Story and an Emmy for best supporting actor in Peter Levin’s 1987 legal drama Sworn To Silence.

Coleman also won two Screen Actors Guild Awards as part of the cast of crime drama Boardwalk Empire and received Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for his starring role in the NBC sitcom Buffalo Bill.

Entertainment

Yvette Fielding says she was assaulted by Rolf Harris on Blue Peter and left alone with Jimmy Savile

Published

6 hours ago

May 18, 2024

admin

Yvette Fielding says she was assaulted by Rolf Harris on Blue Peter and left alone with Jimmy Savile

Blue Peter’s youngest ever presenter has claimed disgraced entertainer Rolf Harris sexually assaulted her when she was a teenage host of the children’s show.

Yvette Fielding, who joined the long-running BBC programme aged 18, told the Sun newspaper how the paedophile predator squeezed and patted her bottom after finding herself alone with him in a TV studio.

The now 55-year-old also recalled an uncomfortable experience with “grotesque” Jimmy Savile, who was later revealed to be one of Britain’s most prolific sex offenders.

Fielding has questioned the role of the BBC in allowing their behaviour, arguing people in the industry “must have known”.

She became a Blue Peter presenter in 1987 and left five years later, going on to host a string of BBC programmes including The Heaven And Earth Show, The General and City Hospital.

Recounting the incident with Harris, she said: “It was very confusing and shocking – just bizarre to think Rolf Harris was squeezing and patting my bottom and I am standing there, thinking ‘I don’t know what to do’.

“Other people in the industry must have known what he was like and you left me alone in the studio with him.

“That shouldn’t have happened. I must have been 18 or 19.

“I think a lot of them did know.”

Harris was a household favourite for decades before his dramatic downfall after being convicted of a string of indecent assaults against young girls.

Stripped of his honours, he died of neck cancer and old age in May last year, aged 93.

He was also known to be associated with Savile, who managed to conceal his crimes until after his death in 2011.

On her meeting with the late depraved DJ, Fielding told the Sun: “He took my hand and started stroking it. ‘Look into my eyes’, he said, ‘And tell me what you’re thinking’.”

“He was grotesque,” she added.

“I just don’t understand why the BBC allowed him to get away with that for as long as he did.”

Savile worked for much of his career at the BBC presenting programmes including Top Of The Pops and Jim’ll Fix It.

The BBC has been contacted for comment.

Entertainment

Girls Aloud kick off reunion tour dedicated to late bandmate Sarah Harding

Published

11 hours ago

May 18, 2024

admin

Girls Aloud kick off reunion tour dedicated to late bandmate Sarah Harding

Girls Aloud have taken to the stage for the first gig of their reunion tour with emotional tributes to their late bandmate Sarah Harding.

A 30-minute delay to the show blamed on “Dublin motorway closures”, did nothing to dim the delight of fans when Nadine Coyle, Cheryl, Nicola Roberts and Kimberley Walsh appeared on stage, standing on individual podiums singing their 2008 song Untouchable.

The comeback tour has been dedicated to Harding, who was diagnosed with cancer and died in September 2021 aged 39.

During the show, the group performed a duet with Harding, whose vocals to I’ll Stand By You played as they joined in live on-stage.

They later sang one of their biggest hits, The Promise, during which the singers stopped and turned their backs to the audience to watch footage of Harding performing the song on her own.

A post on the official Girls Aloud X account said: “Show 1 done. Dublin you were absolutely INCREDIBLE. What a start to the #TheGirlsAloudShow tour.”

The singers won Popstars: The Rivals in 2002 and formed Girls Aloud, going on to achieve four UK number one singles and a Brit award.

They reunited with new music for their 10th anniversary in 2012, while a second reunion was planned for their 20th anniversary when Harding was diagnosed with cancer.

Less than an hour before their expected arrival at the 3Arena in Dublin, the group issued an updated stage time on X.
It said due to “Dublin motorway closures”, the band would arrive 30 minutes later than expected at 9.15pm.

Ahead of the show, a post on the official Girls Aloud X account said: “Rehearsals? Done. Choreography? Ready. Outfits? Fitted. Girls? Aloud.

“…We’ve been working so hard to make this show special for all of you.”

After two back-to-back opening nights in Dublin’s 3Arena, Girls Aloud will play two concerts at the SSE Arena in Belfast on Monday and Tuesday, before heading to the Manchester AO Arena from Thursday to Saturday.

In November, the group had to add six extra dates to their UK and Ireland 2024 arena tour due to “unprecedented demand” following ticket pre-sales.