David Attenborough is Desert Island Discs 70th birthday guest In an honour that he may well value more than his knighthood, David Attenborough has been chosen as the castaway for the 70th anniversary edition of Desert Island Discs. "I was grateful for my knighthood, but this is obviously a very nice compliment from the BBC," Sir David tells me. I have already recorded it, and I felt, even though I have done it a few times before, as if I was going on for the first time as I couldn't recall what music I had chosen in the past. When the 85-year-old broadcaster appears on the Radio 4 programme on Jan 29, he will match a record that has previously only been achieved by the comedian Arthur Askey by making a fourth appearance on the show. A few dozen well-known figures have been guests on three occasions and more than 100 have been on twice. On his first appearance in 1957, his choices ranged from Chris Barber's jazz band to Handel and Sibelius and he asked for a piano as his luxury. In 1979, he went for a Mozart string quintet and binoculars, and, in 1998, his favourite piece was Schubert's string quintet and a guitar. Sir David is likely to face questions from Kirsty Young, the programme's presenter, about one of the most controversial aspects of his Frozen Planet series - the "faked" scene showing the birth of a polar bear cub which, it was disclosed, was shot not in the Arctic but a German animal park. "You'll have to wait and see if that comes up," he says. I'm not going to spoil it. The Attenborough programme goes out 70 years to the day since the first edition, conceived and presented by Roy Plomley, was aired on Jan 29, 1942. Sir David was among an illustrious gathering that included Princess Margaret, Lord Runcie and Jane Asher who turned out at the Reform Club in January 1992 to celebrate the programme's 50th birthday party.