Dunfermline's Doug Allan receives OBE from Princess Royal

Doug Allan received the honour from the Princess Royal on Tuesday.

The BAFTA-winning cameraman, who has worked on BBC documentaries including Planet Earth, Life, Human Planet and Frozen Planet, was nominated for the accolade for services to broadcast media and environmental awareness.

Doug was proud to make the journey from his Bristol home to pick up the award at Windsor Castle.

"I have been fortunate to have been at investitures before because I have a couple of polar medals to my name and they are presented by royalty, he said.

Cameraman and Marine Conservationist Doug Allan after being made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) (Image: Andrew Matthews/PA) "The first one was in 1983 for scientific assistance I had done or the British Antarctic survey up to that point. That was given to me by the Queen in Buckingham Palace. At these things, you never know who is going to be there.

"Then I got another polar medal for all the filming I did in Antarctic and the Arctic in 2012 and Prince Charles came along to that one.

"I didn't know who was going to do it this time and it was the Royal I wanted, it was Princess Anne, so I have had the Royal flush, a full house.

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"It was great. It is all very well organised and you are brought forward to meet Princess Anne and have a little conversation with her. They have done a bit of research of why you are getting it.

"It was different this time is this time your three guests, my sister Judy from Dunfermline, my partner Suzanna and my agent, were able to stand behind me and watched the conversation I was having so for the guests it was a better experience.

"A thoroughly good time was had. We were at the Windsor Palace and had a good look around it and were up there for two to three hours."

Cameraman and Marine Conservationist Doug Allan. (Image: Newsquest) One of those to congratulate him when the announcement came of Doug's honour was friend Sir David Attenborough who he worked on many projects with and who, he discovered, had backed the honour nomination.

Doug said: "I remember finding out a bit about the nomination procedure. I have a friend who I thought might have kicked the thing off and afterwards I learned one of the people he had written to to support the nomination was David.

"After the announcement, I had a letter from David saying congratulations. He didn't mention his part in it.

"I went up to see him about a month ago. I go up with three other long term friends and went up and we had a rare old afternoon chatting with him."

Doug is aware of his responsibilities of highlighting climate change and environmental issues and he hopes the OBE award will help with this.

"This came for recognition of services for filming but much more relevantly, half of the citation was for promoting environmental awareness," he explained.

"It was partly for the environmental awareness for the films I had contributed to and mostly for the number of talks I have done and work I have done to get the message out to people.

"It is one thing to film for a series seen by 20 million people around the world but standing in front of primary schools, that is where you have to change their minds about it. You maybe create a big impact on these small audiences.

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"I like the communication with kids. I have been keen to do the outreach. I have been interested in spreading the message for as long as I have been taking photos. Particularly in the last 10 to 12 years, I have done a series of shows around the country. I have done talks at a lot of schools, about 600 talks.

"Each of them with a climate and environmental message appropriate to the audience.

"I get on with youngsters whether from five years up to catching that perhaps sinister period of 14/15 years old.

"You have got to have a knack. Taking to people is exactly the same as talking to animals. I like filming mammals as all mammals have personalities. Everyone assumes some dogs are cleverer than others but basically all dogs started as wolves a long time ago.

"They have their own personalities and the key to get it relaxed and it doing the behaviour you want is to tune in to that personality . If you are good with animals, you should also be sensitive to animals in delivering the message.

"I like talking to school kids. My talks have an element of anarchy – 'You guys, I know you will do a much better job looking after things than we have done because it is the fault of your adults that were in the mess that we are in.'

Cameraman and Marine Conservationist Doug Allan. (Image: Newsquest)"I have the advantage of having a long track record in Antarctica since I began filming and when I was out with the scientists.

"I have a lot of stories I can tell. I start by telling these stories to an audience then move on to environmental issues."

As the Press caught up with Doug, he was due to deliver an online talk at Scotland's Digital Science Festival 2024 on Friday evening.

"The aim is to inspire young people and their influences about the STEM subjects and the careers that go with them," he explained.

"I went from having an interest in diving and marine biology and things underwater. That was really an exciting place to be as I was growing up.

"I did a degree in marine biology at Stirling University and I wanted to work with scientists on expeditions. That led me to the Red Sea then the big one was working for the British Antarctic Survey in Antarctica. I did several winters there which was fantastic.

"It brought on my stills photography then a chance meeting with David Attenborough in Antarctica in 1981 opened up my eyes to the possibility of wildlife film making.

"I decided to move into that. It was a combination of having met David and being offered another job on another base. The big thing on that base was there was a colony of Emperor penguins. They are really hard to film because you have to spend a winter in Antarctica.

"I contacted the BBC and they put me on to a producer. He said if you are going to spend a winter there then get this shot and this shot. I shot them, took it back and showed him.

"He asked me to do some other filming and that was about 1984. I fell into wildlife filming that way. It suited my personality then and has suited it throughout my 35 year career."

Doug said he has seen huge differences in the way the world has been affected by the onset of global warming.

"If you want to see climate change in action, go to the Pole. The average temperature has gone by by 1.3 degrees centigrade and at the poles, over five degrees centigrade.

"Even two degrees centigrade at the poles is massive if that particular place that takes your from minus one to plus one. All the snow and ice disappears to water."

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He said photos taken out there every year highlight the change.

"When you compare these back then to how they are now it is absolutely staggering. We are talking about ice that has been stable to a huge extent for tens of thousands of years. They have never seen change like that.

"I started going to Antarctica in 1988 and the weather then was pretty predictable. They would tell you when the sea ice would break up, when dangerous currents would break up, how long you could rely on snow on the land and now everything is happening sooner."

For Doug, more thought into the world around us would be a start for taking action.

“I promote environmental awareness because I think we have lost that connection with the natural world, and if we could get that back, many of the problems that we have would be solved quicker," he added.

“I just don’t think we think about it enough.

“We don’t realise that there’s so much we take for granted – it’s the air we breathe, the water that comes out of the pipes and the richness is in the natural world.”

“Most people live in cities, they do jobs et cetera, and they don’t feel part of the natural world. If they did feel that connection, and get the chance to connect with it, and that starts in primary school, then I think you would appreciate it more, you would feel more responsible for it and, at the very least, you would stop dropping litter.”