Attenborough and The Mammoth Graveyard
Harry Potter: Hogwarts Tournament Of Houses
It was a wonderful experience to welcome Sir David Attenborough to your house. It was almost as if Sally Hollingworth and Neville Hollingworth were fossil hunters.
The Swindon couple’s finds, in Attenborough And The Mammoth Graveyard (BBC1), were laid out across their sitting room — magnificent trilobites and ammonites, skulls and eggs, hundreds of millions of years old.
Sally told Sir David that the most treasures of all were at the kitchen table. ‘Sandwiches?’ he asked hopefully.
I’ve been lucky enough to interview the world’s most venerable broadcaster half a dozen times.
I was one of the newshounds in my generation. From day one, we were taught how to turn paper into typewriters and also how to fold it.

It was a wonderful experience to welcome Sir David Attenborough to your house. Sally Hollingworth and Neville Hollingworth were fossil hunters. It was almost as if she was coming to visit for tea.
But after my first interview with the great man, everyone — family, friends, neighbours — wanted to know if I’d got a selfie. My next interview with the great man was my second. I blushed like an adolescent asking for a date. His unfailing charm won him over.
What Sally and Neville found in a newly dug quarry at Cerney Wick in south Gloucestershire was as remarkable as anything he’s seen in 60 years of TV. There were four remains of mammoths and a thick tusk that was as thick as a goalpost.
While professors were called, even though fossil hunting is a popular pastime at universities, it still retains a very amateurish charm. To protect the tusk, plaster of Paris was used to cover it. Then it was taken away in a camper van decorated with polka dots curtains.
A flint blade was as fascinating as the remains of animal carcasses. Much of the documentary — rather too much, in fact — was devoted to investigating whether humans lived alongside mammoths and hunted them, before the Ice Age.

The Swindon couple’s finds, in Attenborough And The Mammoth Graveyard (BBC1), were laid out across their sitting room — magnificent trilobites and ammonites, skulls and eggs, hundreds of millions of years old
This proved that the beasts had been killed off by Neanderthals. Neanderthals are extinct relatives of modern humans. That’s fascinating, but more information about the mammoths was needed to flesh out the picture: how big their herds were, how they differ from today’s elephants, etc.
We did have the fun, though, of seeing Sir David — a nimble 95 — getting down on his knees for a closer look at an archaeology trench, and watching enthralled as a craftsman knapped a piece of flint into a razor-edged knife.
The edge of the knife was applied to a piece raw meat by him. ‘You should keep it for a cookery show,’ joshed one prof.
That would be more dignified than Dame Helen Mirren’s embarrassing stint as a quiz game host, on Harry Potter: Hogwarts Tournament Of Houses (Sky Max/Showcase).
It is difficult to imagine how such an important actress could be persuaded into doing something so blatantly stupid and awful.
She had to ask, with a straight face, questions such as: ‘How many quaffles in total did we see Ron block in his try-out as keeper?’ She stood at a podium, in a hall packed with adult fans of the novels, all dressed like overgrown schoolchildren.
When she did a silly walk called the ‘Slytherin swagger’, they gave her a standing ovation.
The contestants were American: one called her ‘Ma’am’. They scored points for knowing trivia that no one but a superfan could guess, such as the registration plate of the Weasley family’s flying car.
Meanwhile, for a real brainteaser, try this one, from the last festive edition of Only Connect: ‘What links Orlando, Nora, Andrew and Butterworth?’
Do not give up. All of them start with conjunctions: either, nor, or and.
Americanism of the Night: Asim Chaudhry (C4) said on Celebrity I Literally Just Told You, that a U.S. tourist had stopped him asking for directions from St. Reatham. After a few minutes, he realized they were searching for Streatham in South London. It is a story I want to believe.