Sir David’s 70 years on screenpublished at 20:36 BST
20:36 BST
Steven McIntosh
Entertainment reporter at the Royal Albert Hall
The concert gets under way with a short film looking back on Sir David’s decades-long career, starting with some black-and-white footage from his early series.
Live music from the BBC Concert Orchestra swells as he’s seen interacting with animals, peering through binoculars, and walking and sailing into the wild.
Out in the Royal Albert Hall auditorium, huge puppets of some of the animals Sir David has encountered over the years are walked through the crowd, including a gorilla, deer and (very tall) giraffe.
“I’ve been lucky enough to live through what well might be considered the golden age of natural history filmmaking,” Sir David says in the pre-recorded voiceover. “I’ve enjoyed every minute of it.”
The footage on the big screens turns to colour as the years spin by and Sir David gradually starts to get older on screen, reminding us of the huge number of TV series he has recorded and the variety of habitats he has visited.
Snakes, monkeys, parrots, leopards and hippos are seen in the footage interacting with Sir David around the world, but the film concludes back in the UK, as he feeds a fox in a residential garden, taken from his recent series Secret London.