At his New Forest home, the broadcaster and activist discusses autism, Extinction Rebellion and his Self-Isolating Bird Club
Over the years, the BBC has seeded and nurtured some singular specimens of presenter. Chris Packham, after a decade of Springwatch, has begun to grow into that space in the public mind once occupied by, say, John Noakes or Patrick Moore or John Peel. He’s blunt and lyrical and you know for sure that the camera is only eavesdropping on his authentic life – in much the same way that he peers in at nesting boxes and fox dens – and once it’s turned off, he goes on just the same.
He’s invited me down to lunch in his natural habitat on the edge of the New Forest. He’s never strayed far from here for very long. He grew up on the other side of Southampton cycling to the woods, living an I-Spy childhood, scooping up tadpoles, examining beetles, for a while with a beloved kestrel as his closest friend. He went to university in Southampton and for many years he rented a thatched cottage a mile or two up the road from here; in between lockdowns, he traded those low beams and history for the clean lines of his new angular home – all decking and cladding and sheet glass – set in a couple of acres of wooded garden and bordered by a stream.
I’m not an expert on autism. I’m someone that has it
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