CELEBRITY EXTRA:

SIMON King has got THE dream job - travelling to the most beautiful and remote places on earth to film the rarest and most fascinating creatures on the planet. Which is why he’s brought out his book Wild Life, to tell us all about it and give an insight into the man behind the camera. Katherine MacAlister reports.

Simon King has been up for hours when we speak at 9am on a Monday morning.

“Yes, I’m an early riser,” he laughs. “I always like waking up early, but so does my three year-old daughter Savannah.”

No surprises there, considering he has made a career out of capturing the uncapturable. As the face of Springwatch, Autumnwatch and Big Cat Diary as well as working on Wild Africa and The Blue Planet, and winning BAFTA awards for his camerawork on Life in the Freezer and Planet Earth, he’s unlikely to be caught napping.

And with huge energy reserves and an enormous appetite for life, it’s obvious why Simon’s so great at his job. “It’s a passion and I have two in life, my family and my work. The rest is all about compromise,” he admits. “and I’m getting better at that as I go along, aged 46.”

It must have been hard then for Simon to turn the spotlight on himself to write his new book Wild Life? “Well the book is candid but it’s not an exposé – I just share all my adventures because I have done so much and been so lucky.”

Simon King was born in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1962 but moved to the UK in 1964 and was raised in Bristol. He began his career as a child actor aged 10 in films The Fox and Secret Place, and in 1976 accompanied naturalist Mike Kendall in the BBC series Man and Boy, in which they searched the country for Britain’s wildlife.

In 1981, he made his first film for television, broadcast as an episode of the BBC’s The World About Us, and has since produced in excess of 80 natural history films as cameraman, director, producer and presenter.

So were the seeds sown in Africa? “I don’t know, because I was so young when we left. But when I returned to Africa in 1986 it was all too familiar to be coincidental – something about the senses, the light and sound.

“And of course aged three Swahili was the language I picked up. So I suppose I have always been itinerant which makes the world a big beautiful place,” he grins “And I can never wait to get back.”

Marrying a fellow wildlife film maker, second wife Marguerite Smits Van Oyen, with whom he often works, helps of course. He has four children, three of them from his first marriage.

“As for spending too much time at home in Somerset, I don’t know because I never have,” he admits. “I have spent a lot of time in the Antarctic, Shetlands and Kenya recently but then you are there to get results.

“But I do have other hobbies,” Simon says defensively, “so if I’m at home I never get bored. I love painting, turning wood and setting up webcams of the birds on my lawn.”

Of course Simon wouldn’t have it any other way, having just come back from filming a series called The Shetland Diaries over a year and then Autumnwatch. “What Springwatch and Autumnwatch have done is reintroduce us to our wildlife and give us a sense of ownership. If it’s our own wildlife we will care about it more,” he says.

“I’m looking out of the window now and there are about 200 birds feeding, but when we first got here a few years ago there were just a handful, so everyone can do it.”

What everyone can’t do however is stare at a branch for 150 hours to get the right shot. So how much patience does Simon actually have? “What I have is the capacity to wait for something wonderful and hopefully see something tremendous, so I have the patience for that, but for things like my tax return no patience at all,” he laughs.

Simon King will be at Oxford’s Borders on Thursday, August 13 at noon.