Gordon Buchanan: from Springwatch to wrestling giant anacondas

He's spent 20 years filming the world's wonders, but the presenter has just faced his toughest challenge yet: living with hunters in the Amazon and Kalahari

Gordon Buchanan has just got out of hospital. With malaria. Yes, the man who makes his living chasing lions, wrestling giant anaconda and hauling crocodiles has been brought down by that most tiny of beasts - the mosquito. "I'm not going to say I think I was dying," he tells me, "but I imagine people who are dying feel a lot like that."

In his upcoming documentary series, Tribes, Predators and Me, Buchanan joins the world's most remote tribes to observe how they live alongside nature's most deadly predators. He joins a Waorani family in Ecuador's Amazon jungle as they hunt for anaconda as part of a strength-giving ritual, visits the bushmen of the Kalahari who live among lions, and travels up the Sepik river in Papua New Guinea to learn how the Ngala call and hunt for crocodiles in the mud.