Kate Humble was born on 12th December 1968 in Wimbledon, south London. She and her younger brother, Charlie, grew up in Berkshire next door to a farm. She learned to ride at the age of 5 and spent most of her early years mucking out horses.

1988 FIRST TRIP TO AFRICA

Kate left school with ‘A’ levels in English, History and Latin, and decided that travelling to Africa would be more beneficial than going to university. In 1988, aged 19 and with just £800 in her pocket, Kate set off for South Africa. Over the next year she worked as a (very bad) waitress, on a crocodile farm in Zambia, and as a truck driver for a safari company. By the summer of 1989, having crossed the entire African continent, she reached Cairo with £5 and no ticket home.

1989 FIRST JOB IN TV

In 1989, Kate got her first break in television – as a tea-maker and typist at a company that made corporate videos. Over the next few years she worked her way up to becoming a production assistant, then researcher, assistant producer and director.

1992 MARRIAGE

In 1992, Kate married TV producer Ludo Graham

1994-95 BACK TO AFRICA

After the 1994 elections in South Africa, Nelson Mandela came to power, and Kate and Ludo set off to explore the new South Africa and its neighbours, spending several months living out of the back of a beaten up old Ford Cortina bakkie. Their 30,000 kilometre journey took them from Cape Town through Namibia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Swaziland. Once back in South Africa they sold the bakkie to fund a long term dream of getting to the then little-visited island of Madagascar. They spent two months travelling around the southern half of the country on foot, and by lorry, train and oxcart. The Madagascar journey became Kate’s first published article for the travel section of ‘The Telegraph’.

1997 JOINED THE BBC

Kate joined the BBC as a senior researcher on Animal Hospital, presented by Rolf Harris. Her travel and writing experience saw her move to the Holiday programme, where, on her second day in the office, she was asked to do a screen test. Within 2 weeks, Kate was presenting her first Holiday report, from a barge holiday on a French canal in driving rain and thick fog!

Kate was a hit, and the producers decided to give her a slot within the main Holiday programme – Humble Holidays featured holidays under £300, and was made on a shoestring budget. It was while filming one of the Humble Holiday slots (with producer Kate Beetham) that Kate tried her hand at something which has become a hugely important part of both her working and private life – at Porthkerris Divers in Cornwall she learned to SCUBA dive.

1999 THE SALT TRAIN

Wanderlust and a curious desire to cross the Sahara desert took Kate and husband Ludo to Mali. They travelled by camel with a group of semi-nomadic Berabiche tribesman to the distant salt mines of Taoudenni, 1,000km north of Timbuktu. The journey took 35 days; the nights were bitterly cold, day time temperatures soared to 50°C, there were blinding sandstorms, water was scarce and their diet consisted of rice and millet. For Kate this has been her toughest and most satisfying journey to date. She hopes to return to Mali and find her ‘desert family’ again.

Back in the UK, Kate decided to become a TV presenter full-time, presenting the first series of Animal Park from Longleat House in Wiltshire. A year later, Kate was joined at Longleat by Ben Fogle, fresh from his Castaway island in Scotland. 2007 sees the 8th series of this phenomenally successful show.

2000

In 2000, Kate presented a brand new series, Rough Science, in which a group of hard-nut scientists were plonked in the middle of nowhere all round the world, and given a series of complex scientific tasks to accomplish using only the most basic of materials. This was such a success that the team went on to make a total of six series.

Around this time, Kate also presented Tomorrow’s World with Adam Hart-Davis, Top Gear with Quentin Willson, City Hospital with Matthew Kelly, as well as The Essential Guide to Rocks with Ray Mears, and was a regular contributor to Country File.

2001

Kate joined Peter Snow and underwater cameraman Mike de Gruy to present BBC’s The Abyss. She descended 300 meters (1000 ft) underwater in a submarine, in search of the rarely seen six-gilled shark. Kate’s excited reaction when they actually found it was one of the highlights of the series.

The Abyss was followed in 2002 by Return to the Abyss, which Kate fronted, and in 2004 by Amazon Abyss.

2002

In 2002, Kate paired up with bird-watching ex-Goodie Bill Oddie and wildlife cameraman Simon King, to do a week of live wildlife programmes from gardens in Bristol. Wild In Your Garden was followed by Britain Goes Wild, which in 2004 became Springwatch. Springwatch has now run for 3 years, become a huge success, regularly getting between 3 and 4 million viewers a night. In 2006, the trio joined forces again for the first Autumnwatch. Springwatch and Autumnwatch both return this year and a book of the series is out now.

2004

Kate went back to her beloved Africa with Ben Fogle, to make Wild in Africa for BBC2. They returned to Namibia in 2005 to make a second series. The third ‘Wild’ series was filmed last year in California. Wild on the West Coast will be broadcast later in 2007.

2006

Over the summer of 2006, BBC1 broadcast a series of programmes about the sea. Kate wrote and presented a programme about the state of Britain’s sea, called Seawatch, and got her first front cover of the Radio Times..

Kate also filmed Climate Change: Britain Under Threat with her hero, David Attenborough, which was broadcast in January 2007.

2007

Kate travels to the Danakil Depression, a remote part of Ethiopia to film the series ‘Hottest Place on Earth’. Kate and Ludo leave London for a smallholding in rural Wales.

2008

A smallholding wouldn’t be a smallholding without animals. Kate and Ludo adopt Badger,a mongrel from the local RSPCA, two donkeys, Lawreance and Bertie, from HAPPA, acquire various chickens, ducks and geese and two Kune Kune pigs called Duffy and Delilah. As well as Springwatch and Autumnwatch, Kate spent much of the year in the Middle East filming the Fankincense Trail. This ancient trade route took her from Oman, through Yemem, the little-known Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel and finished in Bethlehem on Christmas Eve.

2009

Kate was joined by Chris Packham on Springwatch. She was also the subject of one of the hugely popular Who Do You Think You Are? programmes. She confessed to knowing almost nothing about her family and went on to discover extraordinary tales of honour and courage on both sides of the family. ‘I’ll never be able to live up to ancestors like those!’ she said. She also travelled to Ireland to film her second series of One Man and His Dog.

2010

We had one of the coldest, toughest winters for over 30 years and Kate, Chris and the Springwatch team answered viewers concerns about how our wildlife was coping with a one-off special – Snow Watch. Kate is now busy filming a preparing for a brand new live series to be broadcast on BBC 2 in early March. Lambing Live sees Kate joining the Beavan family on their farm close to where Kate lives during one of the busiest and most stressful times in the sheep farming year. Springwatch and Autumnwatch will be back. For more details, watch this space.