Colin Stafford-Johnson has always been a wildlife photographer and film maker but the first time he stepped in front of the camera was to tell the tale of a tiger called Broken Tail.

Colin was approached by a small film company, Crossing The Line Films, who asked him to name the one story he would like to tell, and it became Broken Tail: A Tiger’s Last Journey, a compelling documentary on the plight of India’s last few tigers.

The film maker said that he became deeply attached to one of the Indian tigers called Maccli. One of the highlights of his life was Christmas Day when he had been following her for a long time and she suddenly started behaving strangely. “I had already phoned home to say I would be delayed and it was that day at 10am in the morning that we heard the roar of another tiger and Maccli had found her mate. That was a bit of a moment!’’ said Colin.

Maccli became famous and was the mother of Broken Tail. “Sadly my love was unrequited,’’ smiled Colin. “She felt zero for me. I was lucky to be a stone in her rocky landscape and she became tame enough for me to photo her.’’

Wildlife of every sort, but particularly big cats, has always been Colin’s passion. “I love to get away, to be far from the madding world, just me and the animals. I had a very lucky, free childhood growing up collecting mushrooms and fishing for minnows under the bridge in the stream. Once I took the bus 50 miles up the coast and spent the week camping alone on a beach when I was just 13-years-old. It was a different time,’’ he said.

What Colin calls his signal moment in life came when he was six, curled up in the study of his Ireland home with the fire blazing and a huge desk surrounded by book shelves full of books.

“I was looking at birds in an encyclopedia, the Google of my time, when I spotted a pen and ink drawing of a Bower bird that constructs house-like structures of rare items to attract the females and I knew then I just had to see one. I had to wait until I was 20 and went back packing around the world but I found one, up in the mountains of New Guinea and looking down on the rainforests it felt like the garden of Eden,’’ said Colin.

Along with far flung places Colin has also made films of his home land, including On A River in Ireland which won the Grand Teton at the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival He has just finished filming in Iceland for a documentary on arctic foxes and sea otters and will be stopping off in Swindon’s Arts Centre with Living A Wild Life on Tuesday, October 9 at 7.30pm. Tickets are £21 from www.swindontheatres.co.uk - Flicky Harrison