TV legend Sir David Attenborough still continues to rake in millions of pounds thanks to his never-dwindling popularity.
The TV icon earned around £4million for the 12 months to September 2023 according to his latest accounts filed this week. And he’s sitting on a cash reserve of £2.3m should he find the need to splash out. The TV naturalist – 98 in May - has hardly been off the box in a career that began in the 1950s.
His latest nature documentary Secret World of Sound With David Attenborough is streaming on Sky Nature and NOW. And he has a new BBC series Mammals starting at the weekend. His extraordinary telly output has meant that since 2017 alone, he’s recorded more than 10 TV series – including 2021’s A Perfect Planet and Life in Colour, a string of one-off programmes and appeared as a guest on countless other shows.
And he’s also penned a staggering 29 books – the latest A Life on Our Planet: My Witness Statement and a Vision for the Future – was published in 2020. His monster work ethic is recorded in the accounts of his firm David Attenborough (Productions) Limited.
Sir David Attenborough's incredible fortune has been revealed (BBC/Sarah Dunn)Latest accounts show the firm has £2.3 million in cash for trading in 2023 He has also a tax bill of more than £833,028 – meaning his income for the year was around five times that figure.
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A note on the books states: “The tax currently payable is based on taxable profit for the year. Taxable profit differs from net profit as reported in the profit and loss account because it excludes items of income or expense that are taxable or deductible in other years and it further excludes items that are never taxable or deductible.”
The shareholders of the company are Sir David, his son Robert and daughter Susan. David, who supports many environmental and wildlife charities including WWF, World Land Trust and Cool Earth, owns 54% of the firm.
His Blue Planet series inspired a war on plastic waste. The BBC series was a huge hit and revelations about the scale of ocean pollution inspired millions to cut back on plastic waste. Starting on Sunday night, Mammals comes 22 years after Attenborough’s acclaimed Life of Mammals. In it he will discuss how safari holidays and tourists may be impacting wild animals and their habitats.
As a hunting cheetah in Africa is chased by vehicles “there is pressure to get the best view of the kill. As the predators start to hunt, so do the cars,” Attenborough explains about the onlooking tourists.
With more than 70 trucks encircling the cheetah after it has caught its prey, Attenborough warns: “Wildlife experts studying the cheetah recommend that there should be no more than five vehicles to each sighting.” He says tourism is essential to fund protection of the animals and the reserves they live in but the huge number of vehicles “comes at a cost” as “more of the cheetah’s hunts fail and more of their kills are abandoned”.
Attenborough adds: “In areas of high tourism, research has shown that the survival of cubs is also greatly reduced. It must surely be possible to respect the animals’ need for space and at the same time enable human visitors to have a meaningful glimpse of the wild world. That is what must be achieved if cheetahs are to have a future on the African plains."
Mammals starts on Sunday night on BBC1 at 7pm
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