The other day, I went to be interviewed in the Savoy hotel. Sitting in what the Savoy now calls the Thames Foyer was Alice Thomson of the Times, a terrifying interviewer because she is so charming. She made me play the game, which she claims I invented, of offering her interviewee a series of choices which one must make (e.g. tea or coffee, town or country). Alice offered me ‘Greta Thunberg or David Attenborough’.
I felt I had to break the rules and say ‘Neither’. There is now a small but growing number of people, myself included, who are fed up with the latter. His early days were wonderful — he was an adventurous zoological and ethnographic broadcaster and then a great controller (the first) of BBC2. But in recent times his role as a National — even Global — Treasure has gone to his head.
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