Sir David condemns natural history cuts

Sir David Attenborough has attacked his long-term employers the BBC, claiming that the swingeing budget cuts at its renowned Natural History Unit in Bristol could lead to dumbed-down programmes. The unit, home to Planet Earth, the Blue Planet and Springwatch, will lose almost a third of its 180 staff and have £12m sliced off its annual £37m budget, ordered as part of corporation-wide cuts by BBC Director-General Mark Thompson.

In an interview with Jeremy Paxman in the Radio Times, the 81-year-old broadcaster said: "With cuts of that size, you simply can't continue the same level of output, or if you do, you're going to replace it with something very skimpy," said Attenborough.

The veteran broadcaster’s latest series, Life In Cold Blood, about the world of reptiles and amphibians, begins on BBC1 next week. Shot in high definition, it costs around £800,000 per episode to make. It is the latest chapter in his epic Life strand which began in 1979 with Life On Earth.

Attenborough also revealed that he has a standard retort for viewers who ask why he shows pictures of the world's most amazing creatures without mentioning God. "My reply says: what about a parasitic worm that's boring through the eye of a four-year-old child on the bank of an African river? It confuses me that I should believe in a god who cares individually for each and every one of us and could allow that to happen."