Attenborough superfan, 6, draws 100th animal for broadcaster's birthday

Many people are admirers of Sir David Attenborough's work and his devotion to animals throughout his life.

But one six-year-old boy - who regards himself as his "biggest fan" - has put pen to paper to mark the broadcaster's 100th birthday, by drawing 100 of his favourite animals.

The bulk of the work was completed last year when Max Evans-Browning went a "little bit famous" on social media for carefully selecting and hand drawing 99 of Attenborough's favourite animals for every year in his life.

To complete the collection, Max has now drawn a platysaurus attenboroughi, also known as Attenborough's flat lizard, which was named after the renowned biologist.

Along with his drawing, Max wrote a letter saying: "I wanted to do something special for you, so I chose an animal named after you.

"I wanted to make it perfect and it took a while, but I hope you like it."

Sir David, who has dedicated his life to documenting the natural world, celebrates his 100th birthday on Friday, which will be marked with a week-long celebration on the BBC commemorating his life's work.

Max, from Penylan, Pembrokshire, has been a fan of Sir David for as long as he can remember and said he would watch his documentaries every night before bed as a toddler.

Despite the 94-year age gap between the two, Max described Sir David as his "favourite person" and said he feels happy for him to reach such a milestone.

"When I saw last year he was going to be 99, I said 'why don't we do 99 for him?' And then we did it and it went everywhere and then finally got to him and a message came back," said Max.

"So this year, because he's 100, I wanted to add one more on."

The 100th drawing took Max "all night", Samantha said, with Max raiding some of his sister's art supplies to perfect the flat lizard drawing.

Wanting only the best for Sir David, the duo "disappeared into her room" and used some of her finest pens to make the drawing extra special.

The drawings sketched for Attenborough's 99th birthday last year spanned across eight A3 sheets of paper and took Max four days to complete.

But the global recognition of Max's adoration began when his mum posted his drawings on Facebook, along with a plea for the card to reach Sir David as "it's her little boy's dream".

The post attracted hundreds of shares in under 24 hours, along with comments of praise from all over the world and even caught the attention of Sir David himself.

It was a dream come true for Max, who has since become Britain's youngest zookeeper at Chessington Zoo, and acquired an Australian pen pal who loves Max's passion.

Samantha said Max has watched all of Sir David's documentaries and owns more animal encyclopedias than she can keep track of.

"You want to be him when you're older don't you?" Samantha asked Max, to which he proudly nodded.

With the pair still on cloud nine after receiving a hand-written letter from Sir David's previous birthday, they remain hopeful this latest addition may lead to another.

But they were realistic that he may have plenty of post to get through.

Max signed his letter off with a safety warning: "I hope you have the best birthday and be careful blowing out 100 candles on your cake."

• A 90-minute special event honouring Sir David will be broadcast from the Royal Albert Hall in London on 8 May at 20:30 BST on BBC One and iPlayer