Sir David Attenborough speaks about his friendship with the Queen

The Queen was incomparably professional. She had a very, very clear idea of what the sovereign of this country should do. I produced her Christmas Day broadcast for a number of years. The very first time I did it, there was a technical problem on the take. I hadn't noticed it. Well, there was no way I could have noticed it. She did it absolutely perfectly the first time, and I was so relieved. I was saying, oh, thank you so much. And the cameraman came and said, there's been a problem. What? I'll tell you later. And so I had to say, it was perfect. Thank you very much. But would you mind doing it again? And she said, not at all. Didn't ask. Didn't say, oh, the stamp of the tiny jeweled heel. No. She just said, go on, I'll do it again. Which she did, of course, flawlessly. And that was very typical. I think there was another occasion when you had to ask for a change of outfit for one of the broadcasts. Well, the first Christmas broadcast I was allocated to do, I went to see the Queen's private secretary, Sir William Heseltine, who was an Australian, a very down-to-earth Australian. And one of the first things to do, of course, was to select the room. And it had to be certain things. It had to be a room where there was quietness, a room where we could get our gear in and look suitable and so on. We eventually found one. And so we went back to Sir William's office and he said, well, now the next thing is, what does she wear? I've no idea. And we had various discussions. The room itself had a green wallpaper. So I said, as long as it's not green. Sir William said afterwards that the Queen wanted to know why I was keen on a non-green thing. And he said, because of the wallpaper. Because either that would change the costume or actually change the wallpaper. And the Queen said, change the wallpaper? Have you any idea how much that would cost? And I think she meant it. Over the years that you were doing the Queen's Christmas broadcast, I mean, all of us, we've all grown up watching them. How did they change over the years? How did she change over the years? She became more and more skilled at maintaining a position, maintaining a way of behaving and speaking, and of mastering a brief and doing a job with conviction. Of course, there was small talk that you had to do. Think of how many thousands of people she must have met. And every one of them is going to go away and say, and she asked me this, and she asked me that, and I said that, and so on. So that she had a mastery of all those things and wholly admirable. I know so many years that you would have come into contact with her in your various professional hats on, but I suppose a lot of people particularly will reflect on the beautiful documentary that you made a few years ago, The Queen's Green Planet. Give me an insight into that, because it absolutely charmed the audience. It got bumper viewing figures. There was something about your relationship with Her Majesty the Queen that people were really enchanted by. Well, if that was so, and I would be delighted if it were indeed so, it was because she wished it to be that way. And because I have produced that Christmas broadcast, and because of the various charities in which I've become involved in, that she's also been involved in, and we have met on those occasions, I don't think she thought I was a stranger. You know, to put it modestly. She did get you to go and sort of check the trees for her, didn't she? Oh yes, she did. Had you sort of scuttling off to check various trees? That was awful for me, because she planted certain trees when her children were each one of the birth. And she had asked me just to check on the notice which said what the tree was, and I couldn't find my glasses. And not only could I not find my glasses, but the placard itself was overgrown with a sort of moss, so I had to make a kind of guess which was wrong. So we had this conversation in which we threw the conversational ball one to another, and it was a great privilege. What's your favourite personal memory of her? There must be so many. It's been a long relationship. I suppose the most precious things were hearing her laugh. Easy to make a polite laugh, isn't it? But she laughed in a genuine way. If there was something funny, she laughed in a genuine way. She wasn't putting it on. And that made it very easy, because she was the expert at getting people to relax. When you met her, you were well aware that you were in the presence of someone extremely important in our society, and yet she made it seem that you were meeting another human being with exactly the same sort of conditions that all human beings have.