Wild thing

Here's a question for you: what do wolves, butterflies, elephants, locusts, flamingos and Angela Rippon have in common? The answer is that they've all had a lens pointed at them by David Thompson, a freelance wildlife cameraman and director.

David Thompson's work has taken him all over the world, from the top of Mount Kilimanjaro to the depths of the rainforests. He films everything from the sort of creatures you find on safari in South Africa to the sort of creatures you find under a stone in your back garden, and he does all sorts of clever stuff with time-lapse photography and aerial filming. The results of his considerable efforts have featured in such programmes as Wildlife on One, Life on Earth, Survival and Equinox. In fact, any avid viewer of wildlife programmes on British TV has almost certainly seen some of David Thompson's work. And, as you may have deduced from my earlier reference to a certain dancing newsreader, he doesn't only film wildlife: for example, he worked on special effects for the film Exorcist 2.

You can see some of his latest work at an innovative new visitor attraction in Bristol that's all about science, nature and the arts. It sounds like a wonderful idea; it's just a pity it operates under the utterly idiotic name of At-Bristol.