Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Desert Island Discs
Presented by Kirsty Young
Naturalist and TV presenter best known for presenting Springwatch and Autumnwatch.
Eight records
I remember being dragged by my parents away from my Christmas presents in 1972 to my Uncle John's and Auntie Barbara's very suburban house. Christmas Top of the Pops came on and David Bowery was performing Starman. He looked amazing. He had this sort of emaciated body with this sparkling harlequin costume, this great shock of ginger mane hair. And every adult in the room hated him. And I thought he looked magnificent, so exciting. A couple of years later, he released Rebel Rebel, and the riff in this is, well, it's just amazing.
When I was asked to choose my eight pieces, I thought I'm just going to go for the pop tunes that I've liked and have been important one way or another in my life. And T Rex's Twentieth Century Boy starts with a bang and put a bang into my life in the seventies.
Well, over the years everyone's tried to produce the perfect pop song, but it was a bunch of scruffy kids in Derry that for me and many others made the most perfect pop song.
Shout Above the NoiseFavourite
Well, as I say, the alienation which my obsessive interest in natural history had already generated from my peers meant that I I wasn't part of the gang, I didn't get to go to their parties, you know, I felt excluded and I was pretty miffed about this. And I wanted a separating mechanism, and Punk, what was that separating mechanism? A couple of years later, you know I'd really got into the scene, a band called Penetration released their second album, but on it was a track called Shout Above the Noise. And this one track has been the mantra for my entire life.
The Jesus and Mary Chain, I always say, have provided the soundtrack of my life. They produced some remarkable music. To many people, it's an obnoxious wall of sound with screaming feedback. But woven beneath it are very delicate, pretty pop songs. And that's sort of a contrast of the violence and the prettiness or the beauty. That's what's been going on in my head. So I'm always happy when it rains.
A few years ago I had the great privilege of working with Billy Bragg, and I was forced to ask him to stay late to help me get a beginning to our film. And my suggestion was that he would be busking for me. So at midnight, on this cold evening, he opened up his guitar case, put down his hat, and said to me, What would you like me to play? That was my moon landing moment when Billy Bragg says to you you can have any song you like in a private acoustic performance in a subway.
I like Girlfriend in a Coma because it's so obtuse. So here you've got a pop song which starts off with this sort of rinky-dink, playful tune, and then all of a sudden there's a girlfriend in a coma, which is about as bad as it can get. And I suppose that I can dedicate this to my very um important catalogue of girlfriends that I've had over the year who I've bored into comas on many occasions by talking way too much about birds, cars, poodles or perverse letters in Viz magazines.
And now, rather strangely, my dogs sing along to it. Every time they hear the first couple of bars, they burst into howling voice. And my mother would occasionally say, Let's get the dogs to sing. So I'd get my phone out and I'd put the tune on and they would howl away. And this caused her great myrrh. And she died a couple of years ago, three years ago. And she had a natural burial. We Megan and myself waited behind when everyone else had left the graveside with the dogs that had had special permission to come. And I got the phone out and put the tune on and the dogs howled. And it was a perfect send-off.
The keepsakes
The luxury
just so that I could get the very best views of everything that I'd be looking at on my desert island.
In conversation
Presenter asks
Can you distill why you think [the rarest sight in the British countryside is a child]?
I'm afraid it's down to the adults, and we've painted a picture of the countryside as a dark and dirty and dangerous place to be, and it's none of those things. It's a place where a child can have an encounter and ignite a spark which will fuel a lifetime of interest in the most beautiful things that we have on the planet. And if they don't have that affinity, they won't be as keen to look after it as people like myself are.
Presenter asks
What was your very first brush with nature?
My parents say it was crawling around on the lawn of our very small house in Southampton and picking up ladybirds, putting them into matchboxes.
Presenter asks
What was the fascination? What was it stirring in you when you looked at [nature]?
The recording
Timestamps play the recording from that turn
Presenter
Hello, I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Discs from BBC Radio 4. For rights reasons the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.
Presenter
For more information about the programme, please visit bbc.co.uk/slash radio four.
Presenter
My castaway this week is the naturalist Chris Packham. T V presenter, film maker, writer, photographer. Every bit of his work revolves around wild life. If he's not busy telling us why we should love Midgies, he's enthusing about the hearing capacity of a barn owl. His passion for animals is clear.
Presenter
What they think of him remains a little more uncertain. He's been attacked by a baboon, charged by lions, and bitten by a puff adder, although, to be fair to the snake, he was trying to milk it at the time.
Presenter
His obsession with the natural world began early, when a predictable boyhood fascination for tadpoles and lady birds grew to encompass mosquito larvae, lizards, snakes, bats, and even a fake fur otter.
Presenter
As a teenager he collected badger poo by day and pogoed with electric blue hair at clash gigs by night.
Presenter
These days he distinguishes himself from the throng by his impressive, in depth knowledge of his subject, and his outspoken views on everything from countryside culls to the problems with cat owners.
Presenter
He says I'll never rest until I've tried to do my own small bit in terms of changing the environment so as it's a better place. I won't do it for my grandchildren because I won't have any. I won't do it for yours. I'll do it because it's the right thing to do. So at Chris Packer, millions of people watch you on Spring Watch and Autumn Watch
Presenter
These programmes now in their popularity almost seem to mark the beginning of the seasons for us as we see them on television. That must be quite gratifying as it is.
Chris Packham
It's very exciting. Yes, it is. It's great to bring such a change, a dynamic change, into people's living rooms. They might have been busy at work all day, driven home in their car, gone straight in and put something into the microwave, and then all of a sudden we can bring the freshness of the world outside to their screens in intricate detail. And we can show them familiar species but doing things which they would never normally get to see themselves.
Presenter
And central to the success of it, I think, when you watch, of course, is that it is live.
Chris Packham
Yes, I like the liveness because it's real and it's wildlife in real time. And we we do have a diet of wildlife which is recorded and we get to see the sensational fragments of that. We don't get to see all of the boring bits in between, but of course for us naturalists the boring bits are what make the sensational things so spectacular. And because we typically wouldn't be able to sit twenty four hours a day and stare at one bird's nest, which our cameras can, we're able to capture these unique little cameos of the natural world which are hidden from all of us, even the most dedicated naturalist, and put them onto the screen.
Presenter
Uh I read that you once said the rarest sight in the British countryside isn't a lap wing or a skylark, but a child. Can you distill it why you think that's happened to children in our countryside?
Chris Packham
I'm afraid it's down to the adults, and we've painted a picture of the countryside as a dark and dirty and dangerous place to be, and it's none of those things. It's a place where a child can have an encounter and ignite a spark which will fuel a lifetime of interest in the most beautiful things that we have on the planet. And if they don't have that affinity, they won't be as keen to look after it as people like myself are.
Presenter
Time for some music, Chris Peckham. Tell me about the first one we're going to hear this morning.
Chris Packham
I remember being dragged by my parents away from my Christmas presents in 1972 to my Uncle John's and Auntie Barbara's very suburban house. Christmas Top of the Pops came on and David Bowery was performing Starman. He looked amazing. He had this sort of emaciated body with this sparkling harlequin costume, this great shock of ginger mane hair. And every adult in the room hated him. And I thought he looked magnificent, so exciting. A couple of years later, he released Rebel Rebel, and the riff in this is, well, it's just amazing.
Speaker 4
The fans when they play it on
Speaker 4
What for anybody?
Speaker 4
Yeah, say I'm gone.
Speaker 4
Exactly then.
Speaker 4
Therefore
Speaker 4
Rebel, Rebel, put on your dress.
Speaker 4
Ramble, ramble, domain.
Presenter
That was David Bowie and Rebel Rebel. So, Chris Peckham, what was your first, your very first brush with nature? Can you remember it?
Chris Packham
My parents say it was crawling around on the lawn of our very small house in Southampton and picking up ladybirds, putting them into matchboxes.
Presenter
And in terms of the location of your house, I mean it it wasn't out in the sort of rural idyll, was it? This was a suburban idle.
Chris Packham
It was, yes, it was on the edge of Southampton. I there were some what the council call wasteland. It was never wasted on me, I can tell you I made the most of that wasteland. And there I found badgers and foxes and snakes and butterflies and my first hedge sparrow's nest. I remember that very distinctly. I was about nine. I was walking down the edge of the the field on my way home and I parted a bramble bush and looked in and saw this little cup filled with these fluorescing blue eggs and they looked beautiful beyond compare.
Presenter
What was the fascination? What was it stirring in you when you looked at it?
Chris Packham
I think in those days it was the simplicity of nature's perfection. When I looked at ladybirds, for instance, on the tip of my finger, poised to take to the air, they all looked immaculate. They were symmetrical. None of them had lost limbs. They were neat. Everything they had seemed to have a purpose and a function, and they never failed. And again, I remember being at the bus stop in Woodmill Lane, and there was a starling that had been killed by a car, and it was lying in the gutter, and I picked it up and fanned its wing.
Chris Packham
sort of mail of feathers, intricate, perfect, beautiful, light, um, splendid, you know, they were shimmering in in in in the sunlight in my palm. I I was so excited. My mum said, Put that dirty thing down, you'll get germs. She was always telling me to wash my hands, and as I always say, I will one day.
Presenter
So, your parents didn't share this enthusiasm. They weren't out there with you poking about in the hedgerows?
Chris Packham
No, not initially. They they weren't, but they were very tolerant of that interest and they they allowed me to turn their very small house into a menagerie. By the time I was eight, my bedroom walls were lined with tanks filled full of reptiles and anything else I could smuggle into the bedroom and put into them.
Presenter
What did you smuggle into the bedroom?
Chris Packham
Well, primarily British wildlife, so it was slow worms and common lizards and bank voles and frogs and toads, of course, initially. Then, as I got a bit older, it was fox cubs and badger cubs. You brought a fox cub into the house? Well, it was meant to be in the garden. My father built a cage in the top end of the garden, and that's where they would spend their day. But I would bring it into the bedroom. I always wanted to sleep with these animals. I wanted them close to me all the time. You know, I would feed them, and so after school, I'd go in there and sit sit with them.
Presenter
You b
Presenter
You're aware, of course, there's a a current and really quite heated debate about what we should do with foxes in our cities, and people are very scared about them coming into their houses and scared about them getting near their children.
Chris Packham
Yes, they are, um and it's an unwarranted fear, I think. I think people exacerbate the problem, people like myself, by feeding them. And we have to be careful how we feed them. We shouldn't do what I did as a child. You should feed them at a distance. So all by all means feed them in your garden, but don't do it close to the patio, and certainly don't do it by hand, because this will teach the fox to associate humans with food.
Presenter
When you talk about wildlife and you talk about your connection with wildlife, even as a little, very little boy.
Presenter
You you now have two poodles. I do, yeah.
Chris Packham
I do the end.
Presenter
Curiously sort of domesticated and refined thing for a man of your sensibilities to have, a pair of p
Chris Packham
Well, I'd like to have other animals, but I'm not at home uh enough to look after them properly. And I call them my joy grenades, because every day they go off and bring me joy. I I all I need to do is see them running sometimes, and I break into a smile and start laughing. Me too.
Presenter
Me too. You and I could sit and talk about dogs for the next forty five minutes. We're not allowed to do that. We're going to listen to some more music then, Krista. Tell me about the second disc we're going to hear this morning.
Chris Packham
When I was asked to choose my eight pieces, I thought I'm just going to go for the pop tunes that I've liked and have been important one way or another in my life. And T Rex's Twentieth Century Boy starts with a bang and put a bang into my life in the seventies.
Presenter
Twentieth Century Boy from T. Rex. I gather, Chris Peckham, that your father has always been a stickler for the difference between information and knowledge. That was drummed into you early on, was it?
Chris Packham
Yes, it was. I was taught to read using a set of encyclopedias and tested on the content, were you? Yes, which sounds extreme and maybe a little harsh, but I'm greatly indebted to his thirst for his own knowledge and for passing that on to myself. It's great as an asset for a naturalist. It means that I read things constantly and remember them because I effectively test myself on them.
Presenter
And so what would you do as a family? What would be a typical weekend in your household?
Chris Packham
Um well, my parents would take me out um and they would take me to the New Forest um so that I could explore things. But then there wasn't a museum in the land, an art gallery in the land, that we hadn't visited. They would take us, my sister and I, to to all of those.
Presenter
Now fifty two year old Chris Packham can sit and contextualise all of that, but I'm wondering if seven year old Chris Packham, when he was being taken round these castles and museums, was there a part of you that was really bored and a bit annoyed?
Chris Packham
No, I don't think there was. I I never remember being bored ever about anything. I suppose because from the time I started gurgling, um my my father was teaching me things.
Presenter
And did they encourage you to question? Did they encourage you to say, what do you make of this, Chris? What do you think about that?
Chris Packham
Not so much, no. My my father believes in in authority. I questioned authority from the very start, I think. Respect for me needs to be earned. It was never given by position, status, or anything else.
Presenter
Let's have some more music. Tell me about this.
Chris Packham
Well, over the years everyone's tried to produce the perfect pop song, but it was a bunch of scruffy kids in Derry that for me and many others made the most perfect pop song.
Speaker 4
Activity dreams are hard to beat Every time she walks down the street
Speaker 4
Another girl in my neighborhood Wish she was mad, she looks so good I wanna hold her, wanna hold her tight Every day she kicks right through the night
Speaker 4
I'm gonna call her on the telephone
Speaker 4
Caparova puts them on the low.
Speaker 4
I need excitement, oh, I need it fab And it's the best I've ever had
Presenter
The perfect pop record. That was the undertones in teenage kicks. So a teenager who loved music and a teenager who who loved and was passionate about the natural world, there came a point when you decided that you wanted to
Presenter
To rear a kestrel. What age were you then?
Presenter
Uh fourteen. Right. Now you need a license to do that. What what happened? You wrote off for a license.
Chris Packham
It was rejected. I wanted to own one. I loved the birds. I spent most of my time looking for raptors' nests and mapping them all out and counting their eggs and counting their young. So, how did you come to raise a kestrel? Where's the king? Well, I went out and I found a nest, and on June 26, 1975, about 2:15, I climbed to it and I removed one of the youngsters illegally.
Presenter
When I went out.
Chris Packham
Uh
Presenter
Illegally is is a very important word there. What what do you think when you look back on that now?
Chris Packham
I think that what happened as a result of me taking that bird out of the nest was incredibly important. It defined the rest of my life. Really? Yeah. Because I loved that bird, and that was the first time that I'd learned to love something. But then, of course, the police turned up and said, you know, you've got to take this bird will have to be taken away. And yeah, that wasn't good.
Presenter
Can you explain more about what the bird meant to you? You said it was the first thing that you learned to love. Tell me more about.
Chris Packham
Well the relationship between man and bird is very different than between man and dog. It's an animal that you coax into a tameness. You never extract the wildness from the bird and you can't touch them. So you have to give everything to it in order to get it to work for you, which in this case is to fly free and come back and sit on your hand and so on and so forth.
Presenter
And would your day's rhythm be governed by the bird's rhythm?
Chris Packham
Oh, my goodness. I mean, I got up before school, six o'clock in the morning. I'd go down, I'd prepare its food, I'd go out, I would fly it before school, I'd run to school late, I'd run back at lunchtime to make sure it was okay. And of course, the whole thing had to be kept secret. No one at school knew about it. None of my well, the friends had started to dissipate by then because of my obsessional interest. The only person I told was John Buckley, who was my biology teacher and an incredible, important early mentor in my life. And one morning he came to see it fly. You know, I was so pleased to be able to stand there with my bird and fly it. And it went and sat in a tree.
Chris Packham
It didn't perform. It sat in a tree and just looked at us and refused to come down.
Presenter
Tell me what happened in the end then. That the bird died under what circumstances and what?
Chris Packham
I sought the the best veterinary care that I could, but the condition that it had is invariably fatal. It wasn't as a result of any of the care that I was giving it, it was just something that it picked up from its food. And on December the sixth, a Saturday evening, it died in my arms.
Chris Packham
And how did that affect you?
Chris Packham
Profoundly.
Chris Packham
I couldn't speak for days and um
Chris Packham
Yeah, and again, I suppose that's what contributed so deeply to the importance of having had that bird.
Presenter
Okay.
Presenter
Let's have some music, Chris Beckham. We're on your fourth disc of the morning. Tell me about this. Why have you chosen it?
Chris Packham
Well, as I say, the alienation which my obsessive interest in natural history had already generated from my peers meant that I I wasn't part of the gang, I didn't get to go to their parties, you know, I felt excluded and I was pretty miffed about this. And I wanted a separating mechanism, and Punk, what was that separating mechanism?
Chris Packham
A couple of years later, you know I'd really got into the scene, a band called Penetration released their second album, but on it was a track called Shout Above the Noise. And this one track has been the mantra for my entire life. I think the title says enough, but listen to the rest of the words.
Speaker 4
Shout out.
Speaker 4
The preachers run towards the shelters. They're gonna find somewhere to hide. Discontentment fills the air as everyone who votes for summer stay. Don't let them win, don't let them drag you in shoot above the
Speaker 4
Don't let them win, don't let them drive you in the shuttle
Presenter
That was penetration and shout above the noise. And you say, Chris Peckham, that that's pretty much become your mantra for life. And I wonder about that, because punk sensibilities are all very well when you're seventeen, a lot harder when you're in your early fifties. Do you do you find it uh easy to stay true to those uh beliefs?
Chris Packham
Yeah, do
Chris Packham
I'm not quite arthritic, so it hasn't stopped me pogoing yet. But no, it hasn't waned.
Presenter
If you put your head above the parapet it will get shot at, and yours does. Do you not mind the feeling of that?
Chris Packham
Not at all, no. If you stick your neck out, you've got to expect to have your head cut off from time to time.
Presenter
And you've spoken about, you know, as a child the the obsessional uh connection that you had with wildlife began to you know, you said the friends fell fell away. When you've talked about the really important things in your life, all of it is you alone with nature. D are you most comfortable when you're alone with nature?
Presenter
I think so.
Chris Packham
Um
Chris Packham
I've enjoyed some very rich human relationships, but those that I get from animals, either those that I have contact with in terms of kestrel and pets, my dogs, or those which I share through observation, are pure and they're honest. They're uncompromising. Are they easier?
Presenter
Bomuchis
Chris Packham
Yeah.
Presenter
Yeah. People have self-interest and ego and all of those things.
Chris Packham
Well they're far more complex and when they go wrong they can be a lot less palatable. I suppose some would also argue that there's a question of safety and security there, because I know that my dogs they will never fail me, they will always bounce off the ceiling when I go home, and they will always bring me joy when I take their leads off and they bound across the beach.
Presenter
You've spent time as a wildlife photographer and a wildlife cameraman. Sometimes, you know, there are viewers who think, Oh, I've got to turn off at that point. I can't watch. What would you make of that argument that actually there there is something repulsive about watching nature in Red and Tooth and Mm? No, it's not.
Chris Packham
No, it's not absolute nonsense. It's part of the process and it's a beautiful part of that process. It's not the death of the greenfinch on your patio as the sparrow hawk is crouching over it, plucking its feathers, sewing them to the breeze. That's a moment in the complexity of that ecosystem, and you have to think that if that's something which is too grisly for you to look at, then you're shutting your mind down to that functioning, and it's the functioning which is the most beautiful thing. A male sparrow hawk honestly is just amazing. But it's what it's doing and what it does and how it fits in that's even better.
Presenter
But what then about your argument that domestic cats should wear little alarms? Because, you know, cats kill birds. There we are. Yes, of course.
Chris Packham
Yes, of course, yeah, they're marvellous predators and I I admire them and like them very much. The problem is that there are a disproportionately large number of them, a very high density of them, in our urban areas, and that isn't a natural situation. All I would like to do is ask cat owners to keep them more responsibly so that we can enjoy a healthy suburban bird population as well.
Presenter
Let's have some more music, Chris. What are we gonna hear now? We're on your uh fifth.
Chris Packham
The Jesus and Mary Chain, I always say, have provided the soundtrack of my life. They produced some remarkable music. To many people, it's an obnoxious wall of sound with screaming feedback. But woven beneath it are very delicate, pretty pop songs. And that's sort of a contrast of the violence and the prettiness or the beauty. That's what's been going on in my head. So I'm always happy when it rains.
Speaker 3
Tell me.
Speaker 3
Who are the clouds in the sky?
Speaker 3
You are the Duchess Sky.
Speaker 4
Virtue is both gold and hurry.
Speaker 4
That's what
Presenter
Happy When It Rains, the Juices and Mary Chain. Tell me, Chris Peckham, you you studied zoology at Southampton University. What sort of student were you?
Chris Packham
I was in some ways a very unusual student. I didn't attend Freshers' Week, and I went to the Union Bar once in three years. I played.
Presenter
Once in three years.
Chris Packham
went once in three years and only missed one lecture in three years. It was a genetics lecture and I missed it because I felt really ill. And I sit at the front of of every lecture. And I I loved university for the opportunity that it gave me to learn.
Presenter
And did you look like a punk at this point?
Chris Packham
Yes, I did, yeah, and no one else did. I remember turning up at university, um, and I had long plaits down the side of my hair which had cats' teeth sewn into them and
Presenter
Who had done that for you?
Chris Packham
And my girlfriend at the time, who who would who would who would decorate me.
Presenter
Yeah.
Presenter
Where did you get the cat's teeth?
Chris Packham
I collected skulls as a kid from Roadkill and I'd picked up a Roadkill cat skull at some point.
Presenter
Right. They make it difficult to wash your hair.
Chris Packham
Yeah, I eventually cut the plaits out, I've still got them. They're in Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, page 27. I was so proud of them, they came all the way down here.
Chris Packham
I wanted to look different, you know, so that I got respite from people of my own age who I didn't want to have anything to do with.
Presenter
The first time I remember y uh seeing you was on The Really Wild Show. That was your first big television gig, and you did look very distinctive on that. You had, I think, platinum blonde hair and you were wearing I don't know if it was a leopard skin shirt, but certainly something. It was a really wild shirt, actually. It was
Chris Packham
It was designed by my sister actually. She made me shirts specifically for The Really Wild Show.
Presenter
Now we should it is worth saying that your sister is Jenny Packham, the the highly noted uh fashion designer. Did she fashion your entire look? Did she say go back?
Chris Packham
She didn't
Presenter
She didn't
Chris Packham
No. No, she tried, and with the benefit of hindsight, it might have been a better idea.
Presenter
I've read that you fought ferociously for that audition to get onto the T V programme, The Really Wild Show. Is that true?
Chris Packham
Yeah.
Chris Packham
Yeah.
Presenter
Yes, it is true.
Chris Packham
Yeah, yeah. I'd started work as a camera assistant and spent all of this time studying. So at the end of my undergraduate career I just exploded with the need to make things and read things. And in order to pay for that I needed work. I heard that there was an opportunity so I wrote to them and asked and they wrote back and said no and then I wrote back and said why not and eventually I bullied the producer into giving me an audition which I turned up to and did some very wacky things. And then he said I'll let you know and I remember sitting and reading Exchange and Mart and looking at the rising prices of second-hand Aston Martins. So I spent the last of my dole money on a train to Bristol and I walked through the rain to his office and said don't waste my time. Are you going to give me this job or not? And he was the sort of bloke that really respected that, Mike Bohnan. And he gave me the job.
Presenter
And and have you bought the sports car?
Chris Packham
In 1985, I got a contract to write some books. I went home to my father and said that I've got some money to buy a car. And he said, Well, you better get something practical. So I bought an Aston Martin DB6 for £5,000. And I drove it round to my parents and parked it outside. My father parted the curtains, looked at it, shook his head and walked into the kitchen.
Chris Packham
I've still got it.
Presenter
Right, it's your sixth of the morning. Tell me about this.
Chris Packham
A few years ago I had the great privilege of working with Billy Bragg, and I was forced to ask him to stay late to help me get a beginning to our film. And my suggestion was that he would be busking for me. So at midnight, on this cold evening, he opened up his guitar case, put down his hat, and said to me, What would you like me to play?
Chris Packham
That was my moon landing moment when Billy Bragg says to you you can have any song you like in a private acoustic performance in a subway.
Speaker 4
I loved you then as I love you still Though I put you on a peddle, they put you on the bill I don't feel bad about letting you go I just feel sad about letting you know
Speaker 4
I don't want to change the world. I'm not looking for a new England. I'm just looking for another girl.
Speaker 4
I don't want to change the world I'm not looking for New England I'm just looking for another girl
Presenter
Billy Bragg and New England. Um you're immaculately turned out, Chris Peckham. Are you filming today? Uh not today. I was just wondering if that meant you were going to be in front of camera. You are you always very precise about the the way you're dressed?
Chris Packham
Yeah.
Presenter
Uh
Chris Packham
Yeah. I like nice clothes. I'd rather have one shirt than six others, and I hang it on its own hanger in order, my sort of O O C D wardrobe, which my sister laughs at. There's a taxonomy of clothing in my wardrobe.
Chris Packham
I know where everything in my life is. I think that sort of need for order has always been a very helpful thing when it comes to understanding natural sciences.
Presenter
It can be a tyranny too though, of course. I mean, people now bandy about the phrase, Oh, you know me, I'm a bit O C D, but you actually sound as if you do have O C D, do you?
Chris Packham
I do, yeah, a a a minor level. I don't have an affliction which sees me have to repeat certain behaviours before I do things. That would be horrific. But when it comes to my space, I I like to live in a very controlled space. Now you're going to wonder how I live with two food walls and a reared stepdaughter. And that's partitioning. She has her room, or she had her room, she's away at university now, and whatever happened in there, that's fine. But my pace has to be absolutely rigidly sorted.
Presenter
Behavioral.
Presenter
Oh yeah, I'm
Presenter
I saw a beautiful photograph of you out on one of these kind of ritzy I guess it was probably an award ceremony with your stepdaughter, looking very much the proud stepdad. You have a very close relationship with Megan, but you said that you have never wanted to have children yourself. Why is that?
Chris Packham
I don't like myself to want to reproduce myself, um, for at first that's the personal reason. And for the in the way
Chris Packham
Well how long we got? I'm very self-critical and I think that that's a healthy thing because I want to continually improve what I try to do. So I want to take better photographs, I want to learn how to communicate more effectively with my audience in television, I want to learn how to write better and to do that you need to be self-critical. So it's difficult for me to perceive any
Chris Packham
any success in in in the things that I that I do.
Presenter
So the the scrutinizing
Presenter
Obsessive, clear-eyed.
Presenter
Approach that you have to life when you I mean, when you've been describing nature to me today, I've been there. You you turn that in on yourself, do you? You scrutinize yourself.
Chris Packham
Yes, implicitly, and I always have done. Maybe it's you know, like the obsessive interest in knowledge that my father wrought upon me. You know, I could look back and and and resent that. I suppose I don't, but I you know, maybe I could. Um but I wouldn't be sat here talking to you unless that had come to fruition.
Presenter
And as you became a a stepfather and over the years as you engaged more and more with with Megan and realized actually what a terrifically rewarding relationship it can be, that that didn't at any point change your mind about being a father?
Chris Packham
No, I didn't expect Megan to be in my life, and it's been the most rewarding aspect of it.
Presenter
Let's have some more music, Chris. What are we going to hear now? Tell me about this.
Chris Packham
In the 1980s, there was the Jesus and Mary Chain and there were The Smiths, both I think equally important, if music can ever be important, certainly is to me. I like Girlfriend in a Coma because it's so obtuse. So here you've got a pop song which starts off with this sort of rinky-dink, playful tune, and then all of a sudden there's a girlfriend in a coma, which is about as bad as it can get.
Chris Packham
And I suppose that I can dedicate this to my very um important catalogue of girlfriends that I've had over the year who I've bored into comas on many occasions by talking way too much about birds, cars, poodles or perverse letters in Viz magazines.
Speaker 4
Girlfriend and a coma, I know, I know, it's serious.
Speaker 4
Girlfriend and a coma, I know, I know, it's really serious
Speaker 4
There were times when I could have
Speaker 4
But you know I would hate anything to happen to her.
Presenter
That was the Smiths and girlfriend in a coma. Uh you live with Charlotte, your partner who runs a zoo. Are you sort of surrounded by animals all the time? Is she bringing things in with a broken wing for you to look at and put a splint on this leg and that?
Chris Packham
She she turns up with her giant rabbit, which she's very, very fond of.
Presenter
How giant is this giant?
Chris Packham
Well, it's the size of the poodles, it's huge, it's a Flemish giant rabbit.
Presenter
Does it get on with the poodle?
Chris Packham
No, not at all. Twice they've so close to have made a successful attempt on its life. And I've so there's this constant tension when the rabbit's in the house between poodle and rabbit and between Charlotte and I because we know that the only thing going on in their in their canine minds is death to the rabbit, you know. So they're very jealous um animals and um we live as a little pack, the three of us, so they don't like any intruders in the pack.
Presenter
I want to ask you to imagine yourself on this desert island, and what sort of animals would you hope to encounter there?
Chris Packham
The greatest diversity that the island has to offer. If it's two palm trees and some sand, it'll be me and some crabs and a passing seabird. As a child, I would design islands. It's very odd, this. They'd be a private island. There'd be no people on it apart from myself. And I'd have lakes and then I'd have some woodland and then I'd have a mountain and then I'd have a marsh. Because I suppose I dreamed of being
Chris Packham
On that island with unspoiled life.
Presenter
Can't believe it took us so long to ask you here.
Chris Packham
Yeah.
Presenter
Uh
Chris Packham
I should
Presenter
Uh
Chris Packham
Passengers into the door.
Presenter
Passengers told you the door.
Presenter
Tell me about your final disc of the morning then, Chris Packham. What are we going to hear?
Chris Packham
Well, we've been on pop songs and this is another, in my opinion, a great pop song. And it's about love. And I liked it at the time, and I've always played it ever since. And now, rather strangely, my dogs sing along to it. Every time they hear the first couple of bars, they burst into howling voice. And my mother would occasionally say, Let's get the dogs to sing. So I'd get my phone out and I'd put the tune on and they would howl away. And this caused her great myrrh. And she died a couple of years ago, three years ago. And she had a natural burial. We Megan and myself waited behind when everyone else had left the graveside with the dogs that had had special permission to come. And I got the phone out and put the tune on and the dogs howled. And it was a perfect send-off. So it's pure by the lightning seeds.
Speaker 4
Night time snows, raindrops flash rainbows.
Speaker 4
Perhaps someone you know.
Speaker 4
Could sparkle and shine.
Speaker 4
This day dreams lie
Speaker 4
Color from shadow
Speaker 4
Picture the moon glow
Speaker 4
Dazzles my eyes.
Speaker 4
Hello
Speaker 4
Love you.
Speaker 4
Just once.
Presenter
Lightning Seeds and Pure. So I'm going to give you the books now, Chris. You get the Bible to take and the complete works of Shakespeare, and you can take another book. What would you like to take?
Chris Packham
Well, I'm thinking fuel for those two. Right, well that's up to you. I would take the collected works of Scott Fitzgerald. I'm hoping there is one. There's a collected short stories, but I'm hoping that I confuse that with his few novels as well.
Presenter
I'm sure there must be. Right, we'll give you that then. And you're allowed a luxury to make things a little more bearable.
Chris Packham
The pedals?
Presenter
No.
Chris Packham
Well, I I guess it would be my binoculars then, just so that I could get the very best views of of everything that I'd be looking at on my desert island.
Presenter
We shall certainly give you those. And uh if you had to save just one track, which one would it be?
Chris Packham
It was very difficult, just because the idea of not letting them win. is so important it would be shot above the noise by penetration.
Presenter
Okay. It's yours. Chris Beckham, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs. Thank you.
Presenter
You've been listening to a download from the BBC.
Presenter
You'll find more information on the Radio Four website bbc.co.uk slash radio four
I think in those days it was the simplicity of nature's perfection. When I looked at ladybirds, for instance, on the tip of my finger, poised to take to the air, they all looked immaculate. They were symmetrical. None of them had lost limbs. They were neat. Everything they had seemed to have a purpose and a function, and they never failed.
Presenter asks
How did you come to raise a kestrel?
Well, I went out and I found a nest, and on June 26, 1975, about 2:15, I climbed to it and I removed one of the youngsters illegally.
Presenter asks
Can you explain more about what the bird meant to you? You said it was the first thing that you learned to love.
Well the relationship between man and bird is very different than between man and dog. It's an animal that you coax into a tameness. You never extract the wildness from the bird and you can't touch them. So you have to give everything to it in order to get it to work for you, which in this case is to fly free and come back and sit on your hand and so on and so forth.
Presenter asks
Are you most comfortable when you're alone with nature?
I think so. … I've enjoyed some very rich human relationships, but those that I get from animals, either those that I have contact with in terms of kestrel and pets, my dogs, or those which I share through observation, are pure and they're honest. They're uncompromising.
“I think in those days it was the simplicity of nature's perfection. When I looked at ladybirds, for instance, on the tip of my finger, poised to take to the air, they all looked immaculate. They were symmetrical. None of them had lost limbs. They were neat. Everything they had seemed to have a purpose and a function, and they never failed.”
“If you stick your neck out, you've got to expect to have your head cut off from time to time.”
“I've enjoyed some very rich human relationships, but those that I get from animals, either those that I have contact with in terms of kestrel and pets, my dogs, or those which I share through observation, are pure and they're honest. They're uncompromising.”