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If we are to listen to James Burke, ­he’s nothing more than a “television journalist” who writes “second-rate books”, is no “better or worse than most people” at predicting the future and is “way past his sell-by date”. I don’t believe a word of it, of course.

Not for nothing has the 86-year-old broadcasting titan been named a “favourite author” by Bill Gates, name-checked by The Human League in their 1980 song The Black Hit of Space (“Get James Burke on the case,” they sang) and hailed as “one of the most intriguing minds in the Western world” by The Washington Post.

Burke famously hosted the BBC’s flagship science magazine programme Tomorrow’s World (demonstrating the video recorder and anti-shark swimming bag) before ­fronting the Apollo 11 Moon Landing in 1969 – the Corporation’s first ever all-night broadcast. Then, in 1978, he went on to write and present Connections, which was sold to more than 50 countries and achieved the highest audience for documentaries in the history of the US PBS network.

It was during this series that he recorded what is widely applauded ­as “the best-timed shot in television ­history”.

Explaining the connection between the invention of the thermos flask and space travel, he delivered his piece to camera: “If you release those two gases into a confined space with a hole at the other end of it and mix them as you do so, and then, set light to them, you get… that.”

Burke then pointed into the distance – precisely a second before a Nasa spacecraft took to the heavens carrying the Voyager 2 craft. The sequence now goes viral at regular intervals, much to Burke’s bemusement.

“Poor souls must be short of material,” he snorts on a video call from his home in the south of France, 500 yards from the Italian border. Characteristically, he insists: “It was just an ordinary countdown. So all I had to do was speak for exactly 12 seconds, which is what I can do – what I get paid to do.” When I suggest he’s being overly modest, he furrows his brow behind his trademark specs (much more slimline than in his 1960s heyday) before correcting me: “No, no no! I’m not modest. Nasa is extremely precise. I knew that dead on to the split-second, the rocket would go, and it did.”

Forty-five years on from the first instalment, he is returning to our screens for a new set of Connections, not for the BBC – which, he says, has been forced by budget cuts to slash documentary making – but a global streamer, Curiosity Stream.

Burke says the reason he wanted to do it is simple: “I got bored”, plus he was asked. “Well, I was approached by a couple of Americans actually, in the middle of nowhere, saying ‘Do you want to do any more TV? Or are you dead?’”

In each of the six episodes, he follows a dizzying chain of links to show how seemingly unrelated ideas connect across centuries.

Unlike previous series, which concluded in the present day, these programmes end with a prediction of a future breakthrough that will transform the world. Frederick the Great’s coffee paves the way for designer genetics and 19th-century ship-boring worms bring us to AI.

Allowing himself a rare moment of pride, Burke says: “I love the moment I found in programme five – that there was a great place to start with Napoleon’s toothpick. And as it was going to end up with predictive analytics [a quantum computer so powerful that it can predict the future], I thought that was a pretty nice jump.”

He says his forecast that will come to pass soonest is the nanofabricator, a tiny machine that can build anything you wish for, molecule by molecule, free of charge. “The very first simple version of it will come in about five years, but it will move fast because nanofabricators will make themselves.”

The breakthrough whose arrival will take the longest is the supercomputer.

“But when it does, look out! It is the one that’s going to go so fast we’re going to be hanging on to keep up.” He anticipates that within 10 years, AI will bring about change 50 times faster than it is today. “And we’ve got to get a grip on it early on, and, if necessary, deliberately limit what it can do.”

This all fills me with more dread than hope. But Burke – more than twice my age – has nothing but buoyant optimism. “Well, you have a choice – dread, you jump off the bridge. I don’t intend to jump off the bridge.

“The thing about technology and science is there is an answer if you can find it. And if you don’t find it, it’s your fault for not looking hard enough.

“I am profoundly respectful of the gigantic thing between our ears. And we use a very, very small amount of it to do what we do at the moment. I’m positive about science and technology because I’m positive about our ability to deal with it. As I say, if you don’t, jump off the bridge.”

The new Connections has ditched the lush location filming (the first series was shot across 22 countries) in favour of a stationary Burke surrounded by lashings of CGI. He says he was excited to immerse himself in the “new style”.

“There’s almost three times as much material in the same one-hour period as there used to be in the old days,” he explains.

“And I think people want that. The world lives at that speed now.”

Born in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, the son of a labourer, Burke says he lucked out in securing a place at Maidstone Grammar School.

He “wasn’t very good” at science and dreamed of being a singer before studying English at Oxford and teaching the language in Italy. You could say he synthesised the two in his later career – his golden rule always being to entertain first and inform second.

Ahead of the 1969 Moon Landing, the BBC was planning its coverage when the news division asked, “Have you got a geek?” Tomorrow’s World replied: “Yeah, his name is Burke.” But Auntie did not seem to realise the gravity of events. Coverage of Apollo 8 in 1968 was ­cut short in order not to interfere with ­children’s teatime show Jackanory, before commissioners realised their error and ­went straight back.

Off air, Burke was told there had been an intervention from a royal equerry, who phoned to say, “The Queen Mother wants to know what the f*** you think you’re doing”. By Apollo 11, during Neil Armstrong’s moonwalk, Burke was much more focused on his silences than knowing what to say about the technical feat, in terror that he would interrupt what turned out to be his “one small step for a man” speech.

“There were no cue cards, there was no script. And we had no idea what they were going to do next? Who did?” Only when it was all over, and with no need to air the pre-prepared astronaut obituaries, could everyone relax.“I think we went to the bar and got extremely instantly drunk.”

Although he thinks the missions were motivated by “propaganda reasons and Kennedy’s amour propre” and “did nothing for science”, Burke is still thrilled by the magic of it all.

“To actually see the first pictures from the Moon with Armstrong and Aldrin bouncing around – there’s been nothing like it in my life,” he smiles. “To have looked up at the sky and to have seen the Moon and know that there were people standing on it. I mean, every night we’d look up and get goosebumps.” If man makes a giant leap to Mars in, say, the 2030s, Burke says it will be a shadow of the space fever of the Sixties.

“It would be, ‘Here we go again.’ Mars ­is just a different load of mud to stand on.” But he adds: “If I’m around, I’ll watch, ­
of course.”

One thing none of us can watch is Burke’s own presentation of the Moon Landing, because the BBC did not see fit to keep the tapes (there are rumours they were recorded over with horse racing). “It didn’t matter, in a sense, because all that got lost was me and Patrick Moore,” says Burke, humble as ever.

“The Nasa originals were not wiped. But the BBC tapes themselves – well you know, tough luck.” Is he really not bothered, I press. Burke smiles.

“That’s showbiz.”

• Connections is available via Curiosity Stream now