it takes two

The producer friend always at David's side

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It seems incredible now, but back in 1987, when Mike Gunton was joining the BBC's Natural History Unit as a junior producer, he was inspired to move quickly because it was widely believed David Attenborough was on the brink of retirement.

The programme they were making together was The Trials of Life, seen at the time as the last in the trilogy, which had started in 1979 with Life on Earth.

"Like many people of my generation, I had seen Life on Earth as a teenager and thought to myself it was the most amazing thing I had ever seen," Mike recalls. "I thought, my goodness, I've got to work with this guy, and this is my last chance!

"So through various fortunate coincidences and conversations, I managed to get on that project. At this time he'd have been about 66, so the perfect retirement age. And I thought, 'This is it, we'll do this one and we'll finish the trilogy and that'll be his great work done'.

Mike was only a junior, with no wildlife experience, but he was very good at working directly with presenters, and quite soon he'd done "about 30 to 40" pieces to camera with David, getting to know him well in the process.

The presenter was quite set on the idea that he was indeed about to hang up his microphone, Mike remembers. "I spent a lot of time travelling across the world with him in cars or boats or planes and I was about to get married and so we'd talk about family life. One of the things that came up was, 'Well, of course, it's a good time to retire. I've done it all. I think I'm very happy'.

"It was a kind of informal, it wasn't written into a contract or anything, but that was the vibe. And I remember my boss at the Natural History Unit saying that when we finished The Trials of Life, we really needed to think about who was going to take over."

For the last shoot of that series, Mike flew halfway around the world with David.