A little over three years ago, environmentalist and BBC television presenter Chris Packham was at home when masked men arrived and blew up a jeep outside his front gate.
“They had stolen the vehicle,” he says, gesturing out his front window towards the now heavily-fortified driveway entrance to his home in the New Forest, a national park near Southampton.
“They filled the car with fuel ... and pushed it right up to the gate. Then they lit a fuse and blew it up. It went off like a bomb – it burned down the entrance.”
Packham says police did “an amazing” job trying to find out why someone would do this to the home of the man who is – after David Attenborough – Britain’s best-known television environmentalist. They made one arrest but never brought charges.
Packham burst on to British and Irish screens in 1986 as the spiky-haired, punky co-presenter of youth-focused wildlife programme The Really Wild Show. He is now aged 63.
“I cannot offer you any evidence, but it is my strongly felt opinion that those responsible for paying the people to blow up my gates were from the fox hunting fraternity,” he says.
Whereas Attenborough (98) is almost universally beloved in Britain as a national treasure, Packham is more of a rough diamond.
Middle-aged viewers in Ireland and Britain may instantly recognise him from their childhood TV-watching days. But in more recent years he has become just as well known to a new generation for his passionate and urgent environmental and animal rights campaigning.
Those involved in fox hunting, game shooting, badger culling, industrial farming and meat production have felt Packham’s hot breath on their necks in public. With his close links to militant eco-protest groups such as Just Stop Oil, he inspires admiration and ire, depending on who you ask.
Britain’s vituperative popular right-wing press often vilifies him. Packham’s social-media feeds are also usually littered with adulation alongside vile abuse.
But surely a jeep being detonated outside his house gave him pause.
“I’ve been bullied all my life,” says Packham, who endured an awkward time as a youth with a then-undiagnosed form of autism that left him isolated and angry at the world, and himself. Yet it also gave him “hyper focus”, he says.
“I’m much more resilient now.”
We sit down to talk among Packham’s collection of art works and punk memorabilia in the front room of his large, sleek modern home, which he shares with his beloved miniature black poodles, Sid and Nancy. His partner of 17 years, the oasis of calm that is Charlotte Corney, roams about upstairs. She doesn’t live with him in the New Forest, but resides instead on the Isle of Wight.
Packham says the threats never deter him: “The last thing you want to do with someone like me is to increase my desire to win an argument. They [his enemies] are better off ignoring me but they don’t get it. Every time they do something like [the threats], I get up earlier and I work harder.”
He gestures towards a coffee table covered in nature books. “See that? That table is made from the wood of the burnt gates. The oak burnt so hot, it looked like mackerel scales. It also had a beautiful iridescent blue texture. Me and my friend Simon, we cut up the gates and made three tables.”
Packham returns to BBC screens over four nights next week as co-presenter of Winterwatch. Along with Springwatch, which broadcasts later in the year, they comprise annual seasonal television events that are beloved in Britain, running for nigh on two decades. Packham likens them to BBC’s Antiques Roadshow as parts of his country’s television heritage.
He is also currently filming for the BBC a big-budget five-part follow up to his acclaimed Earth nature series, this time focused on evolution. Two shoots have been completed with three more to go. With the impact of climate change, does he think humans will ever evolve or one day become extinct?
“We don’t need to be here forever. If everything lasted forever, there would be no room for us. Extinction is a valuable part of evolution. In an ideal situation we would evolve into something else.”
Packham, a trained zoologist and wildlife cameraman, has in recent years also branched out to make television shows about neurodiversity. He received his own life-changing diagnosis just over 20 years ago after a round of therapy following mental health difficulties.
I was a very angry young man, confused because of my undiagnosed autism. It had an enormous impact on my life
In 2017, he went public by making the programme Asperger’s and Me, a raw and tender self-portrait that examined how it affected his youth and later life. Corney, who used to own an animal sanctuary on the Isle of Wight, also gave insight into how it has affected their relationship.
In one particularly moving segment of the programme, Packham emotionally recalled his intense love for a kestrel that he had for six months as a teenager, before it became ill. It meant everything to him and its loss was devastating and dominated his life for years afterwards. His profound attachment to animals, such as his dogs, is a defining characteristic.
Packham’s voice softens a notch as he discusses the impact that his form of autism has had – the challenges it has set, and also the opportunities it provided by sharpening his focus.
He has just finished filming for BBC fresh episodes of Inside Our Autistic Minds, looking at neurodiversity in young people, focusing on ADHD and dyslexia.
“I was a very angry young man, confused because of my undiagnosed autism. It had an enormous impact on my life. You see that guitar behind you? It’s the relic of someone who wants to make noise. Shout above the noise – that’s what you’ve got to do. But I’m more strategic now.”
Packham speaks about himself with disarming frankness and, sometimes, a relentless streak of self-criticism. He also occasionally smooths his face with both hands when analysing himself, as if washing himself clean without water. He also prefers to look away when speaking, although it never feels rude. His voice and demeanour remain unfailingly kind and polite throughout, and the eye contact picks up as he relaxes into conversation.
“I hated myself when I was younger. I’m still not a Chris Packham fan, but I am a bit kinder to myself nowadays. I don’t hate myself any more, although I might still border on dislike from time to time. My autism made me a task-centric workaholic. I see problems in everything I do. But that’s part of the drive. Being relentlessly self-critical is a good driver, but it can also be exhausting.”
Packham says he has become “ruthless” at internalising the anger he still occasionally feels – often at himself, sometimes over environmental issues – and channelling it into productivity. He says he sleeps for only up to five hours per night. When he isn’t making television or campaigning for causes such as veganism, he expends his energy making art.
[ A lesson in life on Earth from the anti-David AttenboroughOpens in new window ]
“I’m not a particularly social person. I close those gates and it is difficult to get me out again. Charlotte or Megs [Megan McCubbin, his stepdaughter from a previous relationship] will tell you. Walking in those woods keeps me happy.
“This is my house – it’s a wardrobe, I suppose, and a bit of an art gallery, a studio and maybe an office. But it’s not my home. The woods here are where I feel at home and at one with myself and the animals I love. I know all its smells, its sounds.”
Packham’s house is a “controlled environment” and he knows where everything is – “even a pen I got from a friend in 1976 for my birthday ... I know exactly where to find it”. That sense of control makes his home a sanctuary to where he retreats if the outside world gets too much.
He “barely spoke to anyone” when he was studying zoology in Southampton, where he grew up, and his social skills were still not great when he started in media, first as a wildlife cameraman and then as a presenter on The Really Wild Show. Yet he was never fazed by speaking to a large portion of the British nation through a camera. He has always been a fluid presenter – it’s one of the reasons for his enduring success over four decades on screen.
I’m a fighter. I’d be bored if I wasn’t fighting something. I don’t expect to have peace in my life
He meets people through work whom he likes and respects, but says he doesn’t really move in media circles: “I’m not a member of the Groucho Club [a Soho haunt of media types]. The basis of my friendships are common interests. Jim Moir [the comedian and artist also known as Vic Reeves] is a mate. But that’s because we’re both massively into art and music. We never talk about our TV work. But as insomniacs, we could be up at 2am on the phone, exchanging Throbbing Gristle singles.”
He talks so openly about his neurodiversity, he says, to help young people who may be suffering as he did: “I live in fear of that teenager sitting in a room alone, reading [19th century French poet] Baudelaire at 14, not seeing light at the end of the tunnel.
“That was me. I don’t want any other teenager to be in that position. I will use whatever small voice I have to better articulate what it is like to be that teenager.”
He will also use his voice to keep campaigning on environmental issues – he remains hopeful over climate change because he believes humans know “what needs to be done – ending use of fossil fuels – but they just need to reach a tipping point to take action”.
He also backs a legal challenge due in a London court later this month that aims to free 17 eco protesters, including his “mates” in Just Stop Oil, who languish in prison after being prosecuted under Britain’s newly-draconian anti-protest laws.
Packham remains involved in a swathe of ecological charities, although he quit as president of the Royal Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) just before Christmas after activists showed him video evidence of animals at RSPCA-approved abattoirs being treated cruelly. He hopes that by quitting he can change how the charity operates.
Outside of the relentless demands of work, Packham plans to visit someone just outside Dublin next month. He says he would like to visit Ireland more – the Burren in Clare may be one option.
Then there is his love of art and, always, punk music. Despite an injured back – he is wearing a back brace throughout our conversation – Packham plans later that evening to see a performance in Portsmouth by punk band The Boys.
The interview over, his phone rings. It’s London Calling: his ringtone is the belting tune by the Clash that warns of apocalyptic environmental events.
“I’m a fighter. I’d be bored if I wasn’t fighting something. I don’t expect to have peace in my life – it’s not a necessary component. I have to honour the personality I have. No stop button. Keep going.”
