This much I know: Desmond Morris

Snakes, lizards and toads… I collected all sorts of weird pets as a child. My parents were marvellous and loving, never trying to suppress me. They encouraged me to explore endlessly.

War turned me off from humans and towards animals. As a child during the Second World War, I thought that when I grew up, I’d have to do what adults do: kill one another. In a school essay, I described the human species as like a monkey with a diseased brain. It’s why I became a zoologist.

Success can come at any stage in life. I made 700 television programmes about animals and travelled the world studying them, but my surrealist art only took off decades later. Now, I’m the only man who has both a book in the top 100 bestsellers of all time and a painting in the Tate Gallery.

The Naked Ape was a rebellious work. It looked at humans as animals. You weren’t supposed to do that then, apparently. Only, we are just another creature,

If I stopped working, I would die. My body is nearly a century old. At 97, it’s causing me all sorts of problems. I take so many pills that I rattle when I walk. But my brain is still here and I’m still painting in my studio every night until 4am. That’s what keeps me alive.

The secret to good fathering is recognising a child’s passion and, even if it doesn’t interest you, allowing them to pursue it. You must let the child do their own thing.

Marlon Brando first telephoned me and said: “This is Marlon Brando, I want to talk to you about the banality of evil.” He was deeply troubled by human violence and, having seen my television series on human behaviour, took me out to dinner. We discussed everything under the sun. From then on, he’d call and we’d talk for hours.

Success with women, according to Brando, is all about being a great elbowist. “Women like to talk,” he told me once, “so after you’ve made love to them you’ve got to prop yourself up on your elbow and listen to them. Do that after you’ve made love, then she’s yours.”

The key to a happy marriage is separate bedrooms. The idea of sharing a bed didn’t make any sense to me and my wife, who had 69 wonderful years together. It meant we didn’t have sex when we were so tired that we were about to drop off. It kept our sex life alive.

I’m not good at dealing with grief. The loss of my wife in 2018 still haunts me. Falling in love is marvellous, but being helpless as someone you love suffers is terrible. There was nothing I could do about my wife’s terminal illness. Now, I try my hardest to get on, but when something happens that brings back a memory, I can’t help wishing she was still here. All you can do is to keep going.

The variety of life on this little planet is just astonishing. I’ll never forget putting my face below the ocean’s surface while snorkelling on a coral reef in the Maldives. Seeing 100 different species of fish and crustaceans in the water below? It was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever experienced.

I’d like to be remembered as someone who never stopped asking questions – an eternally curious person. They say that variety is the spice of life – that’s certainly been true in my case.

Desmond Morris is the founder of DIVA, the Dun Laoghaire Institute for Visual Arts, near Dublin

Photograph by David Parker/Alamy