An RSM way out of his depth - but Attenborough never was. The only time I had anything to do with him was when I was very young and he was just starting his career as a director: he was scouting around for WWI uniforms for the filming of Oh! What A Lovely War. As it happened, I had just joined the school CCF unit, the first of an intake a year younger than previously, and we weren't full-grown: we needed smaller uniforms. The storemen weren't that bothered and told us to find the ourselves, so a major dig through sorted it. In the course of the dig, we went right to the back of th stores, and discovered a boxfull of WW1 uniforms, not what was needed so we left them there.
A couple of weeks later I was talking to the CCF admin major when the Head's secretary came in, having just taken a call from Richard who was, as I said, looking for uniforms. They didn't think we'd be able to help, until I mentioned what I found in the stores, we went downstairs and dug them out: I was right. So off they went and the storemen got the job of sorting things out properly. Oh, revenge is sweet.
Anyway, a couple of months went by and then I received an order, just for little old me, to be on parade in full uniform at 0630on the Saturday morning - I had to catch the milk train to make it. Just me and the Admin major, standing like lemons waiting for not much to happen - until a charabanc with the entire cast on board came round the corner, Lords Gielgud and Olivier, Ralph Richardson and his clan, the Redgraves en masse, John and Hayley Mills, Maggie Smith, you name it, they were there. They were actually headed to Clapham to join the London-Brighton car rally as a promotional stunt, as the filming was about to start in the hills around Ditchling. That was Attenborough, attention to detail.