Sir David Attenborough’s longtime friend and producer Alastair Fothergill has discussed one of the scariest moments of his career, revealing that the prolific documentary maker nearly died during a shoot in the 1980s.
Alastair and David have worked together multiple times over the years but the former has now revealed that David’s career was nearly cut short, 25 years ago, when they were filming ‘Trials Of Life’.
Speaking at a London event, he explained (via Radio Times): “We were filming David from the top of a boat that had a wooden platform on the back for people to dive off.
“We had just done a wonderful piece and David was about to go under the water again and a great wave washed him under the dive platform, which then came crashing down.
“I’ve never forgotten it because David was unconscious and there was blood everywhere and I remember thinking, ‘The one thing you don’t want on your CV is you’re the man who killed David Attenborough’.”
Thankfully, the crew were on hand to rescue David and all was well.
The filmmaker has created many groundbreaking nature documentaries over the years, and his most recent series ‘Blue Planet II’ has inspired worldwide changes to the ways we use and dispose of plastics.
The series was named the most watched show of 2017, with one episode attracting an official rating of 17 million, as David warned our oceans were “could be at crisis point” due to climate change, plastic pollution and overfishing.