Sir David Attenborough drew a huge and enthusiastic crowd at the Eco Tales Festival at Orleans House on Sunday.

The wildlife broadcaster was greeted with a pop-star style frenzy when he arrived to award the young film-makers who entered the Eco Tales Plastic Film challenge.

He presented certificates to 11 young environmentalists who were lost for words when they met their hero at the film ceremony.

Winning film-maker eight-year-old Ruby from Stanley Junior School said: “Meeting David Attenborough was probably the highlight of my day. It was absolutely amazing. I was speechless.

“I couldn’t believe he had come here and we had won. I didn’t have any words when I was meeting him. He was such a nice man and so funny.”

Ruby and her brother, Arthur Muscroft, six, along with Lucas, six, and his two-and-half-year old brother, Theo Saunders, all of Stanley Junior School, won the U10s category for their film, the Green Squad.

Other winners included Solomon Brighton and Jemima Smith, both seven, who travelled all the way from Penzance and 16-year-old Abbie Barnes.

More than 2,000 people were at the festival, which included an eco trail, a woodland walk and life-size marine creatures.

The Twickenham and Riverside Trust worked with school children to make an 8m willow whale, decorated with jellyfish and squid made from plastic bags, which was then paraded by a brass band along Twickenham riverside to the festival at Orleans Gallery.

To view the children’s films, visit ecotales.co.uk.