This is Planet Earth

On TV at the moment is part one of the BBC's big new Natural History programme, Planet Earth. Watching it has made me think of several things.

Firstly, a lot of animals are really stupid and live in daft, inhospitable places: Penguins and polar bears, for example, live in cold, snowy places and not nice warm places like my flat when I have the heating on.

Secondly, despite the programme being named after a Duran Duran song, the BBC have not used that music for the theme tune. They've used some big, important-sounding classical rubbish instead. Maybe the BBC are too tight to pay Simon LeBonBon any royalty fees. I hope that they will at least credit him for providing the title!

And finally, there must be a lot of frustrated natural history narrators at the BBC who are just waiting for David Attenborough to die so that they can have a shot at the big time. I think Attenborough has narrated every nature programme that the BBC has made for the last 50 years. He may even have narrated these programmes before we had television. He could have even been doing them back before we had animals (ie, either a few thousand years ago or many many millions of years ago - choice depending on whether you are a nutter or not).

Perhaps when he does die, it will be at the hands of one of the young potential narrators in waiting. Maybe they'll film him being chased across the tundra and ultimately attacked and killed by his successor. Maybe this film will form the basis of a whole new series (though not, obviously narrated by Attenborough himself). I think this would be a fitting way for him to go. I hope however it won't feature his mating rituals.

Strangely, as I write this, they are actually showing some slow motion shots of the production crew themselves, though sadly they are not being eaten by rivals.