Ever-smiling naturalist Steve Backshall tells Emma Higginbotham about his journey into broadcasting, brushes with death and why there’ll never be another Sir David Attenborough
Steve Backshall isn’t afraid of danger. Click on the explorer and naturalist’s website, and you’ll find him encircled by a fat python, kayaking through lumps of Arctic ice, dangling from a treacherous rockface and chatting with a wolf. Dig deeper and you’ll discover he’s been stalked by a polar bear, swum with sharks (no cage, obviously), broken his back in a climbing accident and, on several occasions, come face-to-face with death.
At least the 48-year-old will be on safer ground when he hosts Seven Worlds, One Planet Live in Concert at the O2 later this month. “I certainly hope so,” he says. “Unless a lighting rig falls on my head.”
Based on the landmark 2019 BBC series narrated by Sir David Attenborough, it’s a celebration of the wildlife that thrives on each of the seven continents. “It was one of the grandest and most ambitious series that the Natural History Unit have ever done, which is saying something. They’ve condensed it into two segments, and it’s going to play on a giant screen with an 80-piece live orchestra, a choir – and me!” he laughs. “They’re not expecting me to fill the shoes of Sir David, thank god, but I will be the host.”
He’s being modest, of course, because if anyone could fill those national treasure-shaped shoes, it’s Steve. Perhaps TV’s most amiable tough guy, he’s best known for Deadly 60, the Bafta-winning CBBC show adored by children (and their mums) in which he trots the globe in search of nature’s 60 most predatory animals. Given that it’s been running for nearly 15 years, he’s met many more killer creatures than that.
“It’s been going long enough now that the kids who watched it way back in 2007 are now going to university, and not hundreds but thousands are getting in touch, going ‘I’ve just graduated with my BSc in marine biology and I only wanted to do it because I watched your programmes’,” he says. “It puts a lump in my throat every time. It’s the most satisfying part of this whole journey – that in some small way it has made a difference.”
Steve’s own fascination with animals and adventure stems from boyhood. Growing up with his younger sister in Bagshot, Surrey, he was an outdoorsy child, “and I was very lucky in that my parents were too. Neither of them finished school, and they certainly didn’t study biology, as I have, but they loved the outdoors, nature, animals.”
They lived on a smallholding, surrounded by rescue animals ranging from donkeys to peacocks, and because his parents worked as ground staff for British Airways, a generous travel allowance meant the family hot-footed around the world. “We had a pretty crazy childhood. We weren’t loaded – we’re not the kind of people who normally would get to go to far-flung places – but we went everywhere.” Including Zimbabwe where, aged seven, Steve had a seminal experience.
“We had a local guide who seemed to be omnipotent,” he recalls. “He’d reach down into the dust, pick up a dropping, rub it between his fingers and say ‘ah yes, a warthog came past this way two days ago pursued by some lions’. And you come round the corner and there would be the carcass of the warthog. It was breathtaking, like having Sherlock Holmes in our midst. I wanted to be him, and I guess it’s not too far away from where I’ve actually ended up.”
After some adventurous gap year backpacking and a degree at Exeter University, Steve went into travel journalism. It didn’t go as well as he hoped. “I had an absolute shocker,” he grins. “I had my first big piece in the broadsheet press when I was 17, 18, and I felt like I was the bees knees. And then in my early 20s I was back home, living with Mum and Dad, working in bars and as a kitchen porter because I couldn’t pay my bills.
“Then I had this brainwave of getting a video camera, going out to Colombia and basically just filming myself, and I sold it to National Geographic. Out of nowhere I went from being a struggling travel writer to being their ‘adventurer in residence’, quite literally overnight.
“I can remember the excitement now,” he continues. “The vice president gave me his credit card and said ‘Go off and film these expeditions yourself, and bring me back the films’, and I had thousands of ideas running through my head. That was the big turning point in my life. It all just fell into place and I never looked back.”
After five years at National Geographic, Steve moved to BBC One’s The Really Wild Show, followed by Deadly 60. With such a lethal-sounding title, you’d think his life was perpetually under threat from piranhas and scorpions, but apparently not. “People would be surprised at how few really dangerous moments we’ve had with animals; there have been far more with human beings – with near car accidents, or getting mugged.
“There have been a few close ones,” he concedes. “Hippos are one of the most unpredictable animals, and I’ve had a couple of encounters that have been way too close.” Diving with Nile crocodiles alongside his cameraman in Botswana proved way too close too: “A four-and-a-half meter male croc came straight at us, and if it had just taken the tiniest of munches I wouldn’t be here. We’ve not dived with big crocs again, and never would.”
But his worst moment didn’t involve animals. Filming the series Expedition in the Himalayas in 2018, Steve flipped his kayak and spent nearly five minutes upside down in glacial water. “That really was a near-death experience – the closest I have come. I thought was going to drown, I thought I was gone. I was just very lucky that my pal Sal Montgomery hauled me out.”
At the time Steve’s wife, Olympic gold medal-winning rower Helen Glover, had recently given birth to their son Logan, after losing his twin in pregnancy. It made the moment even more potent. “In that situation you think far more about what the end game would be, and so that was really affecting. It really hit me quite hard.”
The couple have since had twins Kit and Willow, who turned two in January. Has becoming a dad has made him more wary of taking risks? “I would say so. It’s difficult, because my view of risk is very different to what most people’s would be! I am without question not an adrenalin junkie: the fear and the adrenalin hit is an unfortunate side-effect at best. I’ve probably come closer to dying on camera more times than anybody else in television history, but it’s not something I seek.”
So how would he feel if they decided to follow in daddy’s footsteps? “Oh god, it makes me feel sick even thinking about it, let alone the possibility they might be stupid enough to actually go out and do some of the things that I did,” he laughs. “But how am I ever going to tell them not to? I am going to have so little grounds to ever lecture my kids on anything when they get older.
“But at the same time, my life has brought me so much joy, and so many incredible opportunities, so I’m torn. I would be beside myself if any of my kids decided they wanted to dive with big sharks, but I can’t possibly hold them back.”
For the moment, though, watching rather than experiencing the world’s wildlife is all that most of us can achieve, and shows like Seven Worlds, One Planet Live in Concert are impressive way to do it.
“With all of these blue-chip natural history programmes, it is the opportunity to see our natural world at its very best, to be overwhelmed with its majesty, and that’s why it lends itself so well to a big-screen live presentation,” says Steve. “It will potentially be quite an emotional experience.”
It was certainly an emotional series. As well as showing nature in all its glory, it didn’t shy away from highlighting the devastation wreaked by climate change: scenes included a freezing albatross chick trying desperately to clamber back into its nest, and walruses – driven onto overcrowded land because of the melting ice – plummeting to their deaths from a cliff. Are people going to be crying in the aisles? “I hope so. We will have done our jobs if there’s not a dry eye in the house.” Because people need to know that we’re killing the planet? Steve pauses.“The job that these programmes do probably better than anything else is to inspire wonder,” he says. “Jacques Cousteau said that people protect what they love, and first and foremost what we need to do is to draw people to the natural world.
“We’re at a crux point, because there has been this turn in wildlife film-making towards negativity and a sense of doom, which people can find really off-putting. So we need to find out where the balance is, where we can ethically stand in a position where we are telling the truth without alienating our audience, and also letting them know there’s something they can do about it.”
There’s no doubt that people will listen to Steve, so does he secretly fancy being the next Sir David? “There will never be another Sir David. He is the greatest broadcaster of all time. Nobody can tell a tale and have a roomful of hardened biologists and cynics all weeping into their hankies like he does. He will never be replaced.
“And the media landscape is different now,” he adds. “There is never again going to be just one broadcasting powerhouse, there will be several hundred thousand voices on so many different platforms, and I would love to be one of them.
“I try to keep up with the changing ways that people are telling stories now, even though TikTok makes me feel like a 90-year-old, and I hope that I can keep this career going for as long as possible, because I still love it,” he concludes. “It’s been such a weird and wonderful tangled journey to get here, but if it was to end tomorrow, I haven’t got any regrets.”
Seven Worlds, One Planet Live in Concert is on 31 March seven-worlds-one-planet-live.co.uk
ACTION MAN
Steve met Olympic gold medal-winning rower Helen Glover at a Sport Relief event in 2014; they married two years later and live with their three children in Buckinghamshire.
As well as a TV presenter, naturalist, explorer and mountaineer, Steve’s CV includes educator, author of 12 books, marathon runner and martial arts black belt. “I always figured that I would need to settle on just one thing,” he says, “but I’m nearly 50 and that hasn’t happened yet.”
‘Dancer’ is no longer on the list, however. Despite making it to week nine of Strictly with partner Ola Jordan in 2014, he says he now sticks to dad-dancing at weddings.
An edited version of this interview appeared in Waitrose Weekend in March 2022 (c) Waitrose