Harry Potter p-p-p-picks up a penguin! Daniel Radcliffe makes friends with Antarctic guest on the Jonathan Ross Show

By Holly Thomas
Updated: 06:51 EST, 21 January 2012

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He fought dragons, battled irate mermaids and warded off dementors (figuratively at least) during his tenure as Harry Potter.

And it seems Daniel Radcliffe's versatility when it comes to dealing with unfamiliar creatures hasn't waned since.

The actor looked delighted when presented with a live penguin to feed by Sir David Attenborough on the Jonathan Ross Show this evening.

Made a new friend: Daniel Radcliffe fed a snack to a penguin under the indulgent eye of Sir David Attenborough on the Jonathan Ross Show this evening

Sir David looked on indulgently as the actor presented the bird with a tempting snack.

Not everyone Daniel meets is so comfortable interacting with the star however, and he described one unfortunate incident to Jonathan.

He said: 'They love Potter in Japan. I had my truest Beatle-mania type experience once when I was over there when I was walking through a school corridor.'

'I was visiting a Japanese school for a publicity thing. I brushed a young girl as I was walking past her and I said, "Oh, I’m so sorry." And she fainted.'

Took it in his stride: Having dealt with animals a great deal on screen as Harry Potter, and on stage during his Equus tenure, Daniel was more than comfortable

Daniel at least took the occurrence in his stride it appears, as he continued: 'I had brushed her and spoken to her and it was too much and she fainted.'

Magic touch: Daniel told Jonathan how a Japanese schoolgirl fainted when he brushed past her

'And you know, you’ve got to enjoy that stuff because that doesn’t last forever. When you have a moment like that you kind of have to take in how cool it is.'

Sir David Attenborough's chat saw the show take a more serious turn, as he spoke to Jonathan about home, and voiced his fears about global warming.

He said: 'Where I really like to be, most, is home. Because the North Pole’s great, but home is what I miss. I miss good cooking.'

'We can see very clearly that the climate is changing. In going back to South Georgia, I’ve seen glaciers retreat. Now one retreating glacier doesn’t prove that it’s changing, you have to take a proper view, and the proper view is that it’s changing.'

'Now there can be an argument as to how far human beings are responsible for that change, but in the end, that’s not the point.'

'If, in fact, the sea is going to rise because of melting ice, and rise by as much as a metre or something, that is a very serious problem for lots of cities around the world which are all built close to the sea…this is the time to deal with it, not to wait until it’s happened.'

On a lighter note, comedian Noel Fielding revealed that he used to want to be a zoo keeper and he once saw monkeys released all over Camden when opening a zoo.

He explained: 'When I was a kid I wanted to be a zoo keeper. And me and Julian from the Boosh actually opened the spider monkey enclosure at London Zoo…they officially asked us to, and there was a plaque there and everything.'

'And what happened was they put the trees too close to the fence and they all got out and they were just wandering around Camden.'