Sir David Attenborough is a modest man. When the BBC’s Blue Planet II received a special award for having the “most impact” at last night’s National Television Awards, held at the O2 Arena in London, he came on to decline the credit, saying “what counted in that series is the pictures, the pictures were created by the camera men and women who dived into the ocean to get it, who spent three/four years in doing so”.

He went on to express the hope that television programmes such as Blue Planet II had “helped to stir the conscience of people of the world and that we are going to do something to protect our beautiful world”.

The applause that greeted Sir David’s appearance was, I suspect,