Here comes David Attenborough again with a new telly spectacular about birds. He looks older now than he did on the historic occasion when the great man introduced himself to me at a party to celebrate my magnificent book, The New Naturalists (during which he gave a most appreciative speech). He had clearly made an effort to find me in the crowd, and was, I'm sure, about to tell me that The New Naturalists was the best book he'd ever read – better by far than his own, frankly somewhat pedestrian, writings – and that he always got his best ideas from British Wildlife.