An iconic life, needlessly ruined by a few years of idiocy at the end.
This week – the National Treasure that was Dennis Battenberg died in his home in Lincolnshire.
Dennis – known simply and affectionately as “Battenberg” in households across the nation – was someone who defined a genre.
And yet – his memory is tinged with something other than out-and-out positivity because of the antics of the last 15 years of his career. His ambition was absolute, so much so (sadly) that he was unable to rest on his laurels, and drove his reputation – at speed – into a concrete wall over the last few years.
Dennis was the son of “Lord Battenberg”, and Dennis started his working life as a BBC producer at the tender age of 14 years old – as many public spirited sons of nobility did. At the age of 15 he produced the TV programme “Women and their Brains” purely as he said (in his own words):
“To be brutally honest the TV show was an excuse to meet women, having only been to boys schools at that point, and women were not legally allowed within 50 metres of Television centre, so I hadn’t met a woman at that young age. I wanted not only to meet them but also to study them and understand them. For a long time my interest in the natural world was almost exclusively limited to women”.
After 10 years studying women for programmes such as ‘Women and their brains”, “women and their thoughts”, ‘Women and their dreams” and the controversial “Women and their legs”, he found himself suddenly able to produce the TV programme in line with his other passion – The Natural World.
And thus started the next 70 years of his life, and a chapter Dennis would never want to end, and indeed never would – at least not to his own satisfaction.
At the start of his career he astounded the public by showing them aspects of the natural world that they had no idea existed and by the end of his career he was showing them aspects of the natural world that actually didn’t exist.
To find out more about Dennis Battenberg – listen to his full obituary on “The Obituary Show – Episode 1” Listen Now: https://www.theobituaryshow.co.uk/
