Once in a while, someone comes along on our television screens who breaks all the usual rules of television presenting. Like Barbara Woodhouse, Sister Wendy Beckett and Fred Dibnah before him, Johnny Kingdom was one such unlikely star. And like them, he was taken to the nation’s hearts.
Johnny, who has died in an accident on his land aged 79, first came to national fame in 2006 when he presented the BBC Two series Johnny Kingdom: A Year on Exmoor. This was enjoyed by viewers and critics alike, the Daily Telegraph announcing that “Johnny Kingdom has rustic England coursing through his veins”.
With his broad Devon accent, roguish smile, trademark hat and moustache, Johnny embodied the public’s view of a rural “character”. It was a role he gladly played up to, boasting of a hell-raising youth, and confessing to having done a spot of poaching in his younger days. But the image of the lovable rogue was not the whole story. He always struggled to read and write and only became a film-maker following a near-fatal accident in his job as a lumberjack.
He was born in Brayford, north Devon, a few months before the outbreak of the second world war. He was the second child of six, and the only son, of Walter Kingdon, who worked in a local quarry, and his wife, Joyce (nee Moule). Johnny later changed his surname to Kingdom, as people often misheard it as such.
Johnny attended the local village school, then South Molton secondary, and on leaving at 16, he became a farm labourer. In 1958-59 he was one of the last young men to do national service, serving initially with the Royal Artillery and then with the Army Regimental Police in Hong Kong. On his return, he followed his father into the explosives trade; and later took over his job as the village gravedigger, a role he performed for more than half a century.
Later Johnny became a lumberjack. But his career ended abruptly when, while he was working alone, the anchor chain holding his vehicle suddenly snapped. The hydraulic arm smashed through his cab window, causing him serious facial injuries and concussion. When he came to, to find his dog licking his face, he somehow managed to drive back home, and was rushed to hospital.
To combat a subsequent spell of depression, he borrowed a cine camera from his friend Roger Gregory, and began making films of the wildlife around his Exmoor home. He almost gave up when, having returned from his first day’s filming of a herd of deer, he realised that he had been pressing the off button when he meant to turn the camera on, and vice versa. His determination led him to try again, this time with much better results.
Lacking any formal training was no barrier to Johnny, who learned to edit his footage and began selling VHS tapes (later DVDs) of his wildlife films at local markets and country shows. Spotted by a TV producer, James Cutler, he made his first film for Yorkshire Television, entitled Johnny Kingdom and the Secret of Happiness. This was shown in November 1993, as the last episode of the First Tuesday strand.
He went on to present three series for the West Country broadcaster HTV. These were directed by a fellow wildlife cameraman, Richard Taylor-Jones, who remembers Johnny as “hugely inspirational”, not least because he lacked the university education and social background usually needed for success in this highly competitive field. Taylor-Jones also remembers entering Johnny’s “office”, where there were piles of tapes kept in old shoeboxes, with no apparent filing system – a treasure trove of remarkable footage.
In 2002, Johnny published his first book: Johnny’s Kingdom: The Secret World of Exmoor. Then, at the age of 67, he finally got his big break on national TV with A Year on Exmoor, thanks to the persistence of his producer at HTV, David Parker, who had lobbied long and hard to get Johnny a slot on BBC2. During the following decade, he popped up regularly on both BBC and ITV, and authored more books, including A Wild Life on Exmoor (2006), Bambi and Me (2008) and Johnny Kingdom’s West Country Tales (2011). While these may not have had the literary qualities of some more celebrated nature writing, they were a commercial success, and very popular with his enthusiastic fan base.
Johnny would regularly appear at the British Birdwatching Fair, where he attracted large crowds eager to hear his stories and watch his wildlife footage. Taylor-Jones describes him as “a wonderful, magical man, who reminded me why we all need nature in our lives, and how to enjoy it in the best possible way”. The TV presenter Nick Baker, a fellow Devon resident, said: “He really was part of Devon, and it’s going to be a much quieter and less interesting place without him”.
Johnny is survived by his wife, Julie (nee Carter), his childhood sweetheart, whom he married in 1963, his sons, Stuart and Craig, four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
• Johnny Kingdom, film-maker, author and TV presenter, born 23 February 1939; died 6 September 2018
