What Football Team Does David Attenborough Support? Chelsea or Leicester City?

Search online for what football team does David Attenborough support? and you will quite often find the same answer: Chelsea.

There is only one problem.

There is very little good evidence that Sir David Attenborough is actually a Chelsea supporter. In fact, Attenborough himself has made it pretty clear that football has never been a major interest of his.

The Chelsea link appears to come largely from another very famous member of the Attenborough family.

His older brother Richard was not merely a Chelsea fan. He became part of the club itself.

So, does David Attenborough support Chelsea, Leicester City, or anyone at all?

The most accurate answer is that David Attenborough does not appear to support a football club in the traditional sense, although the one club he can definitely be linked with from his childhood is Leicester City.

Is David Attenborough a Chelsea Fan?

David Attenborough is sometimes included on lists of famous Chelsea supporters, but there is little direct evidence to back that up.

It is easy to see where the idea may have started.

David’s older brother, actor and film director Richard Attenborough, was a lifelong Chelsea supporter and had an extraordinary relationship with the London club.

Richard first became interested in Chelsea after training with the club while preparing physically for his role as Pinkie Brown in the 1947 film Brighton Rock.

His connection grew from there.

He served as a Chelsea director from 1969 until 1982, later became Life Vice-President and, in 2008, was made the club’s Life President. He remained closely associated with Chelsea until his death in 2014.

David also lived in Chelsea for a period during his early BBC career.

In an interview about the 1956 Suez Crisis, he recalled being called urgently to Downing Street to prepare a broadcast by Prime Minister Anthony Eden. His car became caught in traffic caused by crowds travelling to or from Chelsea Football Club.

Attenborough’s memory of the incident was mostly one of frustration at being unable to get through the football traffic while a major international crisis was taking place.

Living nearby and having a Chelsea-mad brother certainly gives him a connection to Stamford Bridge.

It does not, however, make him a Chelsea supporter.

David Attenborough’s Leicester City Connection

If there is one football club with which David Attenborough has a genuine personal link, it is Leicester City.

Attenborough was born in London in 1926, but his family moved to Leicester when he was a young boy after his father, Frederick Attenborough, became Principal of University College Leicester.

David grew up on the university campus, attended Wyggeston Grammar School and spent a great deal of his childhood exploring the local countryside and collecting fossils.

Leicester remained an important place to him throughout his life, and both David and Richard were made Honorary Freemen of the City in 1989.

It was also in Leicester that David attended what appears to have been one of the very few football matches of his life.

And remarkably, he could still remember some of the players around 80 years later.

The Leicester City Match He Never Forgot

In January 2015, Attenborough appeared on The Graham Norton Show alongside former Leicester City and England striker Gary Lineker.

Naturally, the subject of football came up.

Attenborough admitted that he wasn’t much of a football fan, before recalling attending a Leicester City match as a boy.

He remembered goalkeeper McLaren and winger Danny Liddle before adding:

“It was Leicester City and it was 80 years ago. That was the last match I went to!”

He then joked that although he had been Controller of BBC Two when Match of the Day was broadcast, he didn’t actually have to watch it.

That seems about as clear an answer as we are going to get.

Someone who went roughly 80 years without attending another match probably isn’t secretly checking the Chelsea scores every Saturday afternoon.

Who Were McLaren and Danny Liddle?

Attenborough’s memory was also impressively accurate.

Sandy McLaren was Leicester City’s Scottish goalkeeper from 1933 until the Second World War interrupted league football. He made 256 appearances for the club and was regarded as one of the leading goalkeepers of his time.

Danny Liddle was another Scottish international who joined Leicester in 1932 and made 273 league and FA Cup appearances before the war.

There is even a possible candidate for Attenborough’s match.

On 5 January 1935, Leicester City beat Chelsea 1-0 at Filbert Street. McLaren was in goal and Liddle played on the left, scoring the only goal in the 86th minute.

David Attenborough was eight years old at the time.

We cannot say for certain that this was the match he attended, but the date, players and his estimate of “80 years ago” fit remarkably well.

There would be a nice bit of irony if it was.

The man regularly listed online as a Chelsea supporter may have watched Leicester beat Chelsea in the only football match he clearly remembers attending.

So What Football Team Does David Attenborough Support?

The safest answer is none that we can firmly confirm.

David Attenborough has openly described himself as not being much of a football fan, and his own story suggests he may have gone around eight decades without attending a match.

Chelsea is strongly associated with the Attenborough name because of his brother Richard, but there is no strong evidence that David inherited his brother’s love of the club.

If any team can claim a small part of David Attenborough’s football history, it is Leicester City.

He grew up in Leicester, watched the club as a child and could still remember members of their 1930s team when he was in his late eighties.

But calling him a Leicester City fan would probably be stretching things too.

Sir David has spent much of his life taking an interest in animals found across every continent on Earth.

Footballers, it seems, were one species he never became particularly interested in.