|
Simon King was born in Nairobi, Kenya but moved to the UK in 1964 and has been working in the field of Natural History film making for almost 30 years. He began his career as a child actor at the age of ten in such films as The Fox and Secret Place. In 1976 he accompanied naturalist Mike Kendall in the BBC series Man and Boy in which they searched the country for Britain's wildlife.
First television films
In 1979, he made his first film for television - The Willow, a study of the wildlife which surrounds a willow tree. This was shown in The World About Us series, as was his following film - The Hidden Land, a study of the wildlife which exists around the hotels in Spain's Costa del Sol. He has since gone on to produce in excess of 80 natural history films as principal cameraman, director, producer and many more as presenter.
Presenting and filming
Simon made two series of King's Country and a series of King's Country Diary for the BBC. He was also responsible for the annual BBC Two Christmas dramas including Rannoch the Red Deer, Dusk the Badger, Shadow the Peregrine and the award winning Aliya the Asian Elephant and Tyto the Barn Owl which won an RTS Technical Excellence Award, a Japan Wildlife Festival Environmental Award and a Silver medal at The New York Festival of International Programming.
He presented the highly successful six-part series King and Company and A Walk on the Wildside which was two and a half years in the making. Since 1992, Simon has worked out of the BBC's Natural History Unit on programmes such as Nature Detectives and Wild Nights with Simon King and won a BAFTA for his camerawork on Life in the Freezer.
As well as being a regular presenter on BBC Two's Tracks, Simon fronted Watchout on the same channel and filmed all over the world for Hot Shots, a series which looked at the making of natural history films.
He has been a regular presenter on the NHU's Live Watch programmes and fronts Big Cat Diary, which follows the progress of lions, leopards and cheetahs in the Masai Mara. He also presents Autumnwatch and Springwatch from some of Britain's wildest places. He had principal camera credits for Wild Africa and The Blue Planet.
From scuba diving to composing music
Simon's skills are not limited to film making. He has written a book, a number of forewords, scripts for BBC One films narrated by David Attenborough, and is a regular contributor to magazines and newspapers. He is a qualified scuba diver and enjoys wildlife photography, art, and composing and arranging music.
Known to millions the world over as the face of Big Cat Diary and in the UK as the ‘man in the field’ in Springwatch and Autumnwatch, Simon King was born with a passion for the natural world. From his earliest memories as a baby in Africa, to his present day vocation as a wildlife film-maker, his story is one that is coloured by all things wild and free.
His childhood obsession with animals was nurtured by his parents and led to his television debut at the age of ten, when he acted in a film produced by his father, The Fox, about a boy befriending a fox on Dartmoor. This early flirtation with television was the start of an unbroken marriage between a fascination with wildlife and his desire to tell others about it.
Simon’s career as a cameraman, producer and presenter of natural history films has taken him around the planet many times and led to the revelation of sights and natural events never recorded before. It has also brought him face to face with mortal dangers and comic encounters, both with animals and people.
Charged by enraged elephants, tossed by mountainous seas in the South Atlantic and attacked by a rabid cheetah, Simon has had many close shaves during the course of his career. But whether confronting lions armed only with a shovel and a dodgy stomach or helping to liberate an angry hyena from a deep pit, humour peppers his often hair-raising experiences.
Emmy and BAFTA Award winning camerawork, covering some of the most dramatic natural events on earth, has been realised through committing thousands of hours to life in the bush. With filming trips away from home, like the months spent in Patagonia filming Killer Whales for Blue Planet and years spent following the big cats of Africa, dedication to his passion for the wild world and balancing his dual loves, for family and wildlife, has proven to be his greatest challenge to date. However, whether working with David Attenborough to film San Bushmen hunting in Botswana, raising orphaned cheetahs in Kenya or sitting on a Scottish hillside watching eagles, Simon’s insatiable passion, fascination and amazement with the world about him radiates though his writing.
What started as a boyhood obsession, boiling badger heads to preserve the skulls and pinning dead birds’ wings to his bedroom wall, has taken Simon to every continent on earth and made him one of the nation’s most beloved presenters of natural history. He writes with humour, candour and sometimes great sadness of his rich and varied life experiences to date.
|
