The first time I saw him on TV he was chasing an armadillo or, perhaps, a giant anteater. Either way it was pointed at both ends and had a creditable turn of speed. But so did David Attenborough, who was very young and laughing and wearing shorts like a Scout hoping to win his armadillo (or giant anteater) badge. It was about 1954, but I remember it clearly because TV was not at the time associated with either fresh air or fun.
In sober hindsight he would deplore chasing and catching an armadillo (or anteater). Now he would sit quite still, breathless with admiration, murmuring like an underground stream that armadillos have identical quadruplets or that anteaters can wash their own ears with their tongues. I may have made that bit up.
And here he is at 85 standing at the north pole. Actually standing there. You only know the sun is too low to warm the small of your back if you are really there and the small of your back is something you are increasingly aware of at 85. As Chaplin said to Groucho when they parted for the last time: "Keep warm."
There is inevitably a poignancy about David Attenbough in Frozen Planet. And yet even here, as so long ago in South America, there is a comic chase. A sea lion was in hot pursuit of a penguin, both of them spectacular in water and then spectacularly flat-footed on land like Chaplin's little tramp being chased by a whiskery bully. In case you were worried, the penguin got away. I do like a happy ending.
