David Attenborough will host a new BBC series that celebrates his sixty years in broadcasting.
Attenborough, who will be 86 on May 8, will return to the Borneo Jungle where he first encountered an orang-utan in the wild in the 1950s.
The three-part BBC 2 documentary will chronicle the changes in nature broadcasting over the past six decades and revisit Attenborough’s award-winning shows, including Life on Earth, The Blue Planet and Frozen Planet.
"It is in the can, all done. It really covers the three areas which fascinate me, the technology, the development of science during my lifetime, and the environment," he said. It also features some personal anecdotes including Attenborough’s rejection, early in his career, by BBC Radio on the basis that his teeth were too big.
At the launch for another of his TV shows - Kingdom of Plants 3D on Sky Atlantic – last week Attenborough also spoke of his debt to the scientists who shared their knowledge with him down the years.
"My job could not be done without the scientists,” he said. “Provided the scientists believe you are playing fair, they are not in any way possessive of the difficult things they have discovered."
The veteran broadcaster also blithely dismissed any talk of retirement. "Retire? The world is infinitely complex. Major things have happened in the last 50 years year … extraordinary."
