Arthur Ransome set me on the road to becoming a botanist. By the time I was 14 I'd read all his books and saved up so that I could go to the Lake District to camp and learn to sail. It tipped me towards natural history.
I've gone from "the conservationist" to a pariah because of my views on man-made global warming. I still don't believe the current theories.
I used to be a rugby player and I like a punch-up.
I've been part of a world I never thought I'd enter. I've met Jacques Cousteau, Fidel Castro and Arthur C Clarke. I've spent my winters diving in the Indian Ocean and summers in the high Arctic.
I have a large adopted family – half black, half white. It was always my plan to adopt because I went to church every Sunday, three times a day, until I was 16.
I'm a patron of gamekeepers. When I was a kid I'd cycle to Brighton from London. I'd stop along the way and there'd always be a good gamekeeper who'd invite me in for tea. They taught me a great deal.
I live in Somerset. If I'd lived here 10,000 years ago there'd have been giant elk wandering around in tundra.
My mother's birthday was Primrose Day. When I was growing up in the outskirts of London I used to be able to pick a bunch for her on the way home from school. We've lost so much from the countryside.
God, I mind getting older. It's horrible. I open old people's homes and once, when I got to one, I was the oldest person there.
We've got to stop destroying chunks of the world. In my first year teaching at Durham I took students to Sierra Leone. We found kids dying of malnutrition because we'd chopped down their forests and dug up their diamonds. I've been a campaigner ever since.
I've always liked motor cars. I've been a petrolhead all my life.
I'm very lucky. I had a loud mouth at the right time, I was a don at an idyllic university and I've got a wonderful family.
David Bellamy is patron of Butterfly World in St Albans, Hertfordshire (butterflyworldproject.com)
