Loading summary
Transcript138 lines
- [00:02]
Chris Packham
My autism's a bit like a gift, only sometimes when you open it, you don't get what you want. I create a space where I can feel comfortable because I've made it, I'm in control of it. But it's a space which isn't entirely comfortable for other people. It's my way of controlling the fact that really, I just want to be there on my own. This planet. This is our home, our one and only home. And it's so amazing.
- [00:34]
Matt (Host of Homing Podcast)
Today I've come to the New Forest to visit the remarkable Chris Packham. Chris is a broadcaster and conservationist. I first became aware of him when I was a kid watching the really Wild show. And nowadays, of course, he presents the BBC nature series Spring Watch. Chris has been really honest in the past about his struggles with his mental health. He was diagnosed as autistic in his 40s, but. And in this episode we really lean into what it means to be neurodivergent and particularly how it's affected by your environment. He tells me why he chooses to live with furniture and objects that make him feel uncomfortable, as well as sculptures that look like strangely contorted bodies. We talk about how he can't stand supermarkets, the importance of routines, and the day that someone blew the front gates off his property. Chris speaks with astonishing openness and self awareness and this is definitely one of the most memorable conversations I've ever had. I really hope you enjoy it as much as I did, and happy listening.
- [01:40]
Matt (Interviewer)
Chris, thanks for coming on the podcast. We always start at the beginning. So you were born in Southampton, is that right?
- [01:48]
Chris Packham
Yeah, I was, yeah.
- [01:49]
Matt (Interviewer)
What was the family home like at that age?
- [01:52]
Chris Packham
Well, I was born in Peartree, but I don't remember that because we moved when I was two to Middenbury and we lived in a three up, three down, 1930 house with a relatively small garden, detached, and it was very leafy at that point. That area, most of the gardens had trees. People cared for their gardens. They were normally laid out in a fairly traditional way and the neighbors would go to the Garden Central on Sunday and come back with a few more marigolds to feed the slugs. So it was very sort of kempt and up together. And it was close to where my parents had grown up. When I say close, I mean within like 3, 400 meters of where both of them were born. They'd previously moved away, lived in London, but had come home. And my father was a marine engineer, and so, you know, the port of Southampton suited him in terms of the work that was Here at that time. And, yeah, I mean, I think I go back to the area now and it's very, very different. The trees have all disappeared. Houses are not as sort of meticulously maintained as they were at the time. They were all wooden windows and everyone would paint their windows in a slightly different style. Ours were rather sober, dark blue and pale blue. The neighbours, the Kennards, on the other side of the street, were more to my liking. They were black and yellow. They had wasp windows, which I thought were pretty cool. Yeah, and it was. I mean, it was one of those communities. Everyone spoke to one another, everyone knew one another. They didn't necessarily always get on. There was a degree of curtain twitch, I suppose, and that sort of stuff. But, yeah, it was a healthy place to be. It was the 60s and occasionally it was on a hill and occasionally in the winter it would snow and everyone would go out and there were no cars on the street at that time. If there were cars, it was one per household and they were parked on the driveway and all the kids would slide up and down the hill on sledges. We had sledges in the early 60s. You wouldn't bother having a sledge there if you live there now.
- [03:57]
Matt (Interviewer)
So tell me about your bedroom. Cause I'm imagining a bit of a menagerie.
- [04:03]
Chris Packham
Yeah, bedroom was always really important to me because it was very much a refuge. I had a sister, so we had a bedroom each. I never had to share a bedroom. Thank goodness for that. And so it was a place where I kept my books, where I kept my drawings and essentially, obviously, initially, my toys. Lots of thunderbirds. The walls had posters of the Apollo space Miss and all of those sorts of things. I was massively into that at the time. But then, of course, they were juxtaposed with posters that identified all the British butterflies and moths. So the room was very much a sort of a study, if you like, a mini lab. And I had a microscope that my parents had bought me and a telescope, but you're right, it was full of jam jars and boxes. And then by the time I was about 8 and 9, it was filled with tanks. And my father put up some Dexian shelving on one of the wall so that I could completely cover the wall in tanks. I was very fond of reptiles at that time. And I had geckos and skinks and garter snakes and king snakes and sometimes some snakes that I didn't ought to have had. And for me, at that point, it was always very much about. I mean, some of those were animals that I'd got from pet shops, if you like. But it was also about going out and catching animals, it was about incarcerating things, it was about bringing them back to study them. And I would sit and gaze at them in those tanks and jam jars and boxes and ca for hours and hours and hours. Obviously, standards of husbandry weren't always brilliant. And there would be escapes. I mean, reptiles, snakes in particular, really hard to keep in. They would always be escaping. And we had a house without central heating, which obviously made it cold in the winter. We had coal powered fires there. But it was good for catching the reptiles because what you could do is you could get an angle poised lamp and you could put it down on the ground and shine it and the heat coming from the lamp would generate heat in the room and any snake that had made a bid for freedom or a lizard would be gravitating towards that heat, which made it easier to catch them and get them back in. And our small garden, it was about, I don't know, half the size of a tennis court, I suppose, and it had a couple of fruit trees in. But soon it had enclosures for grass, snakes and ponds. And then latterly it had cages. And by the time I was into my sort of early teens, I'd started to sort of take in animals that had been rescued. The local RSPCA inspector would bring things like fox cubs and badger cubs and wounded tawny owls and things around. I'd got a bit of a reputation for someone who would try and keep them alive and get them back in the wild and that meant that they needed enclosures. So I was very fortunate that my parents did allow me to turn the house into a menagerie. And the garden, there were certain animals that weren't meant to come indoors, but obviously as soon as my mum's back was turned, they'd be indoors. You know, I'd smuggle them upstairs. Kestrels and fox cubs and badgers and things like that.
- [07:17]
Matt (Interviewer)
And how do you explain why you were doing that?
- [07:21]
Chris Packham
I was fascinated by just about everything that Craig called Slytherin, slimed from a very young age. My parents say that I was into wildlife before I could talk. My earliest memories stretch back in detailed memories to just before I started school. And by that stage I can remember being obsessed with bats at that point and dinosaurs. Obviously we didn't have a lot of money, but I was taken to the library every Saturday and I gone through all of the, you know, what you call the children's, you know, wildlife Books and then I went through all the adult wildlife books and then what money they did have they would spend on more books for me. So it was always about wanting to, you know, learn more about all of that life, but also to encounter it. And I mean, look, this was the mid-60s. You know, I'd get home from school, I'd dump my, my bag and I'd just jump over the fence at the bottom of the garden, be gone. And you know, that wasn't negligent of my parents. There wasn't that pervasive fear of young people being out of their parents eyesight that there is now. And I, I would explore the local fields and it would be about, you know, finding bird's nest and catching grass snakes and those sorts of things. And I started to sort of keep quite meticulous notes and diaries. It was always about sort of documenting it and collecting things as well, you know, I mean, I've still got. I mean, I didn't take you into the room. I've got a huge skull collection and feather collection and all of that sort of stuff. You know, we naturalists, we can't walk by that stuff without picking it up. And sometimes it seems to have an intrinsic value, never monetary, but a value that you might measure in excitement and fascination. And so the underside of my bed was packed full of old shoe boxes that had decaying things in them that I was encouraged to get rid of but wouldn't. And then when we got a freezer, because obviously we didn't have freezer initially, but when we got a freezer, yeah, my mum soon reluctantly realized that half of it was going to be for the peas and carrots and the other half was going to be for Chris's roadkill specimens.
- [09:31]
Matt (Interviewer)
So you made a really lovely documentary a number of years ago where you talked about a kestrel that you took in. So just talk about that for a moment if you could.
- [09:39]
Chris Packham
Yeah. So I got into birds when I was about 12. My dad had got me a pair of binoculars and up until that point birds were okay, but I was always more interested in if they were dead. You know, I'd put them up in the gutter or something like that because they flew away and I couldn't catch them, I couldn't study them and effectively without binoculars I really couldn't see them. So he bought me me a pair of binoculars, really old ropey binoculars. And it really transformed everything because I suppose without knowing it I figured out that I could learn more about creatures in their environment rather than dragging them into mine and putting them in a cage or a tank. So I started birding. And then in the area where I lived, you know, there's always a sort of a hierarchy. I always say all birds are equal, but some are more equal than others. And the kestrel was the, was the king of birds, if you like, you know, and obviously I'd fantasize about golden eagles, but living in Southampton and not western Scotland, that was never on the agenda. But kestrels were. And at that point they were our commonest raptor. They've declined very significantly since. And so we would see kestrels. And then I decided I would go out and find all the kestrels nests between Southampton and Winchester. I had a push bike and obviously we were cycling around and that was a study. So I started to find the nest and map the nest and count the eggs and count the young. And I had a brilliant biology teacher who would come and ring the youngst and that was fantastic. But I got this book on falconry and then the film Kez came out and I was already obsessed by kestrel. So I ended up taking a kestrel from a Nest in 1975 on June 25th. And yeah, I mean, it became the be all and end all of my life. I mean, the rest of the world and universe completely shut down. I was utterly devoted to the bird and I trained it and it would fly free and I'd take it out before and I would fly it and I absolutely doted upon the bird. You know, it's very, very beautiful. And with the benefit of hindsight, it was obviously the first time I'd really fallen in love with something. And, you know, it was the first time I'd obviously, again, with the benefit of hindsight, had recognized that I can have a very deep relationship with other species of animal, not just humans. Anyway, unfortunately, the bird became ill with a disease that now would be very easily treated, but not at that point. And it died on December 6. And the loss was catastrophic and had a profound impact, which lasts until today, losing something that I'd invested everything into. And at this point, I was also coming, I wasn't coming to terms with, but I was having to deal with some of the ramifications of being an undiagnosed autistic youngster and the impacts that that was having on my life. So a combination of that, the loss of the kestrel precipitated a quite significant mental health episode. I mean, I went back to the kestrel's grave every year, dutifully on the Morning of the anniversary of the morning that I buried it well into the time that I was doing the really Wild show in the late 80s. That was the sort of the depth of the loss and trying to reconcile that. So, yeah, had a profound impact. And obviously, initially that impact was negative. But I think it also played a very positive, formative role in my life as well. Because it allowed me a focus on an obsessional interest. Basically, we call it focused interest now. It's a bit more polite, I think, than obsessional. I'll stick with obsession. Cause I'm an obsessional sort of bloke. And that gave me a way of taking myself out of the rest of the life where all of the conflict and anxiety was. And it gave me a space where there was security. And my bedroom and the kestrel in that bedroom was that safe space that I could go to. And so I suppose that from then on, I've recognized that I need those safe spaces. They don't all have to be physical, but they can be temporal or emotional or whatever. But they're really important. Hmm.
- [14:02]
Matt (Interviewer)
So fascinating. So are you describing the living thing itself as a safe space, or are you talking about your bedroom in conjunction with that character? I mean, what is a safe space for you?
- [14:14]
Chris Packham
Well, I mean, if we think about the physical environment, you know, the room that we're sitting in, nothing has happened here by accident. You know, everything happens for a reason. So everything is chosen. There's nothing lazy. It's a bit shambolic at the moment, it's untidier than it typically would be. But we're in the process of shifting stuff around. We might be moving. But I came to realize that going back to my bedroom in my teens, that I needed to take control over certain aspects of my life in order to manage that anxiety. And one of the things that I managed to negotiate with my parents was being able to control my bedroom. So I was allowed to decorate it in the way that I wanted it decorated. I was allowed to, you know, put the things in it that I wanted in it and take the things I didn't want in it out. And I had a sort of a developing interest in art and design and color. Color was particularly important to me. And they allowed me to decorate it. And I was very, very fortunate. And they didn't know why that was. I didn't know why that was. But I made a space there where, you know, after some of the problems and trials and tribulations that I was having at school, I could go back to. I could close the door. And it was a private space where I was completely in control and that I recognized as important. And I think that then you bring the living organisms into that, Whether it was the kestrel or subsequently, it's been my dogs and things. And again, I think it's that very personal relationship. The intensity of those relationships also give you something which is very. When I say private, I don't mean that it's exclusive, but it's really important and intense. So at this point in time, I've got Sid and Nancy, the poodles, and I walk them every day that I'm at home in a piece of woodland. I go to the same piece of woodland where I lived actually, before I moved to here. And I know that space intimately. I feel very comfortable in that space. Know all the trees and the smells and the shapes, the colors and the sounds. And the dogs love it there because they grew up there. And we go there because everything's sorted and there's no one else there. So it's just us. And that is an incredibly important source of respite and solace.
- [16:46]
Matt (Host of Homing Podcast)
Basically, if you're enjoying this episode and are curious to see inside Chris Packham's home, we're sharing an exclusive house tour over on Patreon. Chris shows us the artworks on his walls, including work by his friend Vic Reeves. He tells us why he lives with furniture and objects that make him feel challenged and uncomfortable. And he walks us around his amazing rewilded garden in the new forest. Head to patreon.com homingwithmat to take a look.
- [17:18]
Matt (Interviewer)
If there's somebody listening who has a neurodiverse child, what would you say to them about, do you think that that child should be allowed to do whatever they want in their bedroom just based on what you said there?
- [17:32]
Chris Packham
Well, within reason, yeah. I mean, I think allow them to do everything they can within reason. I mean, there are limits. I mean, there are things I'd like to have done to my bedroom that wouldn't have been appropriate. But, I mean, I think negotiate to those limits because I think that young people like that, they need security. It's not always about the physical space. It's about the emotional space. And it can be access to other things that they may well be into. Could be music, could be art, poetry, could be social media, could be anything. But I think what parents need to do, and I always say this is study your children meticulously. I mean, I always say, get a notebook and a pencil. Don't feel bad about that, because if you can understand Those things which manifest difficulties, and also those things that manifest the joy and the relief, and sometimes they're very, very hard to spot. And bear in mind that your child may not be in a position where they can first identify those things. And even if they can identify them, they may not be able to articulate to you what they are. And I remember having terrible struggles trying to explain to my mum what problems were, because I didn't fully understand the problem myself and I couldn't manifest the language to be able to communicate that to her in the first place. So my poor mum would just be totally confused by what I was saying or not saying. But I do think that if you look for those patterns in those young people's lives, and sometimes they don't occur in the moment. I mean, they can be things that are building over a period of days, a week or so, and then you can concentrate on managing the things which present difficulties and creating the things that offer them positive outcomes. So, I mean, my parents got a few things right. They knew that, you know, that giving me books was great because I would read the book until I knew every word in it and then I knew every photo and I'd, you know. And they knew that I liked learning sequences. So they would get me things like posters of all of the, you know, the British kings and queens, and I would just learn it until I knew them all. I knew them in order, I knew when they died, I knew where their kids were. And then the Apollo posters. I just loved learning all. There was a comfort in being able to order all of that information. And that's relatively simple information because there's only a limited number of kings and queens and that information doesn't change, it's inflexible, it's history. So they provided me with those sorts of resources, and that actually was really helpful. So, again, if you can identify those things, where that young person is, is able to basically really get into it and feel good about it and own it. And it's about being able to build their confidence, basically. Because obviously there are very many challenges, and those challenges are very difficult when you're young. But there are very often aspects of life where you can really do things, you can achieve things. So it's about identifying those, making sure those resources are available. And that makes. Sometimes it might mean taking your child somewhere where they need that, or it might be just giving them posters of kings and queens. I'm sure things have moved on, but for me, having a set of encyclopedias and knowing all of the entries For A, B, C and D was really important.
- [21:03]
Matt (Interviewer)
So tell me about your parents. You touched on your dad. What was your dad like as a character?
- [21:09]
Chris Packham
Well, my parents had both had very difficult upbringings. They were children. During the war, neither of them were evacuated. Well, my mother was evacuated, actually, that's not true. Towards the end of the war, she was in a shelter that took a direct hit and destroyed half her family and they were literally blown all over her. So that was sort of unimaginable trauma. My father, his mother had refused to allow him to be evacuated and their house took a direct hit whilst they were in the Anderson shelter, but the house was destroyed. So they were working class kids. They were never in a position to pursue further education that wasn't available to them. They were both extremely bright and they were therefore intellectually underachieving. I think that caused enormous frustration for my mother. My mother was someone who would flip between learning to play the harp or learning the Russian language, anything which would. Which was difficult. My dad had a very keen interest in military history and so he would read enormous amounts all of the time about that and he would. Obviously, part of the joy of my childhood was being taken to every castle, every regimental museum and every battlefield. And I still do that now. I still go to museums and battlefields and stuff, although my father's dead. It was a way of giving those events context, which I think is really important. We had some great trips, obviously we went to the Normandy beaches together and eventually we went to the site of the Battle of the Little Bighorn in the US because we talked about that battle all of our lives and we went there. So, yeah, and yeah, they didn't have a lot of money ever. We didn't holiday overseas, we holidayed in the uk. We basically drove around the coast in a. To beat up Vauxhall Viva or Ford Anglia. But it was interesting. The key thing was always interesting. Relationship with my mum wasn't easy with that. My dad was one of those stiff upper lip Englishmen who basically never talked about mental health, never talked about my girlfriends, but he would be very happy to talk about Napoleon and Wellington at Waterloo till the cows come home. So it was a relationship which wasn't entirely opened, it was very partitioned, but again, I think that suited me. My relationships are all partitioned. I have people that I talk to about art, I have people I talk to about birds. I mean, I don't talk to a lot of people about anything much, really, but I do find that if people are going to try and match my Obsessional interest in a subject, then they generally need to be a specialist. And what you find then is that you don't find many people, for instance, that are into Egon Schiele and they're also into the breeding habits of the Golden Oriole. So, you know, to be fair, you know, if I need to satisfy both of those in conversation, I need to find two people.
- [24:24]
Matt (Interviewer)
That's so brilliant. I love that there's something called inherited trauma, which is the idea clearly, that very traumatic experiences passed down generations. Right. So you described your, your mother losing her family in a really, really difficult way. Do you feel like you inherited some of that? And was there that sense of sadness and trauma in your childhood as a result?
- [24:52]
Chris Packham
I think yes, I think it's the answer. But there wasn't a great deal of. There was a lot of conflict and a lot of that conflict was because of my undiagnosed autism and that lack of my ability to communicate to them. Obviously it was, I say, 60s, 70s, no one knew what that was. Chris was sometimes just a very, very difficult child. There were problems at school, et cetera, et cetera, social problems. So that presented them with difficulties. But again, you know, there's no sort of dry run, is there? There's only real life when it comes to having kids. So you can read whatever you like in books, but you've got to deal with the situation in front of you. And I think that my parents, they just thought that I was probably a hyperactive, non, sleeping, obsessional kid that had extreme sensitivities to some sensory things that would trigger pretty violent reactions. I don't really know. And again, we didn't talk about it. That was one of the things, because of the. I mean, I suppose the key thing was that whatever trauma was going on in my life, maybe that of my sister is never going to match what happened in theirs. That's the honest truth of it, you know, so we were never, I was never allowed to be ill. You know, if my leg had been severed by a Nile crocodile, my dad would have said, you've got double maths, just get on with it. You know, it was very much along those lines. Mental health was never discussed because, you know, imagine. And I mean, there was no treatment for what. My mother almost certainly had post traumatic stress disorder for obvious reasons, but there was never any treatment for that. So she had to negotiate her own way through life. And that would have been the same for thousands, hundreds of thousands, probably millions of people following that conflict. And so there was not an opportunity to do that. So the trauma I think was that there wasn't ever a desire to sort of seek support. So when the bird died, for instance, I lost the power to speak. I just couldn't speak. I know it sounds absurd, but I just couldn't make words come out of my mouth. And my parents, because of their obsession with my need to learn things, sent me to school and I was already having in trouble at school anyway. But then going to school and then not being able to speak in the classroom, you can imagine in 1975, 76, that was never going to go down well, you know, so it's just things like that, you know. Now modern parenting would be such that if your child was suffering that much mental distress, you know, there is access to information about how to deal with that and there would be hopefully opportunities to find support for, for that child. And there just wasn't at that time. And I don't think there was, you know, in my parents mindset. So the trauma that was passed on wasn't direct, but it wasn't also, you know, there wasn't that desire to find that necessary support. I don't think so.
- [28:08]
Matt (Interviewer)
Your sister Jenny is a well known fashion designer, which I think is so interesting as well, because both of you found great success professionally. But what you're describing actually is not the environment that you would expect that necessarily to come from. So what do you put that down to?
- [28:29]
Chris Packham
My parents wanted me to go to university because they should have gone to university. But as I say, working class kids in the 40s, that was never going to happen. It wasn't really until my generation in the 60s and said where that opportunity was more frequent. So they were very keen on me getting an education. There was never a Svengali thing. They were never living their life through me. They just wanted me to be able to recognize the opportunities they felt they should have had. And all working class kids. My dad was quite sort of politically motivated and came from very much a sort of a socialist background. He believed that we all have a right to education, health, shelter, adequate food, et cetera, et cetera. So therefore, you know, they set the bar really high. I mean I never ever achieved throughout the whole of my life anything which satisfied them. You know, certainly not obviously academically and beyond, you know, I would never be able to, you know, doesn't matter what mark I got, would never be high enough. And my sister, who's four years younger than me, you know, she was also in competition with me as well. Well, you know, there's a Bit of a poodle uprising going on outside. There's obviously something that needs to be suppressed out there by the army of poodles. But the. So I think that, you know, whilst there was no direct competition between myself and my sister because we had very different interests and of our different ages, she was equally trying to satisfy my parents and she was trying to stake her claim and say, listen, it's not all about Chris. It's not all about, you know, the fact that he's very good at this and this and this. I can be good at stuff, you know. And again, I'll be honest with you, it was the 60s, there was a degree of chauvinism, there was more interest in. My mother was essentially a housewife up until the time she was able to go back to work and worked as a legal secretary and so on and so forth. As I say, she was a very able and intelligent woman. But so they put a disproportionate amount of interest into my education and I think my sister rebelled against that and said, no, no, I'm going to do this, this and this as well. So a combination of like, you know, always being, you know, led to think that we were underachieving, which led us to try and overachieve. I think, again, sounds cruel, but ultimately we wouldn't be having this conversation if it hadn't been for that. And it did come at a cost sometimes. I mean, I kind of gave up ever having any interest in satisfying my parents by the time I was in my mid teens, to be honest with you, as most people do, but. But that was outwardly, and I do remember other times later on, I would say to my mum, I won the photographic competition. And she said, oh, that's good, what did you win? And I said, oh, I won this category, this one and this one. And she said, did you win overall? And I said no. And she said, well, you can keep trying, I suppose. And it was always like that. But the thing is, I kept trying. I'm still trying to. I don't. It can be harsh, but I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing. Look, as I said, we were two working class kids, we didn't have anything. If we hadn't have got up and started doing stuff and worked really hard and believed in a meritocracy and invested in the things where we thought we could develop skills and attributes that would allow us to achieve some of the things that we may have wanted to achieve then without that sort of background of needing to always go the extra. I won't say mile, hundred miles, then neither of us would have been doing what we're doing.
- [32:19]
Matt (Interviewer)
Have you ever had that moment from either of them where they've said, well done or we're proud of you?
- [32:27]
Chris Packham
I mean, I don't recall it, to be fair, you know, my father was a very fair man. You know, my father was a fair man, but he never saw a job, job as being finished. If you did something, there was obviously always the next step. So my dad would acknowledge that I'd taken a step, but then he would always be interested in, what are you going to do next? Okay, top work. That's good. Now what are you going to move on to? It was always about the next thing. And I think that's a fair point. I'm not particularly interested in the past. I think I haven't really achieved the things that I've wanted to achieve, but. But I'm still trying and I have methods. And for me, winning is not giving up. I think that's the difference. I suppose for some people, winning is getting a grade A at your exam. And your parents are going to say, great, that's because that's the top mark you can get at that point in time. But for me, winning is not giving up. It's not thinking, okay, I got an A. It's, what's the next exam? What's the next thing? And that's what I think is a real driving force. That's why I've got. So you have to have so many projects. I can't rest. I mean, I showed you the studio. I've got like three or four art projects on the go, plus the fact I've got my legal cases that I'm running at the moment, goodness knows how many of those as a form of protest and activism. Then I've got the activism. Then I'm trying to make some TV programs. It's always like that.
- [34:05]
Matt (Interviewer)
Just to quickly touch on school. School wasn't great for you, was it?
- [34:09]
Chris Packham
I mean, I got on. I always got on all right with the. With the teachers and the lecturers and whatever, but I didn't really get on post 12, 13, 14 with people of my own age. And of course that in such a regulated environment that made life quite hard and not knowing how to deal with it, I had to come up with my own plans. And by the time I'd got to 18 and was going to university, the only plan I could come up with in my sort of simplistic way, was just to basically avoid people of my own age. So I went to university and didn't speak to anyone other than my wonderful lecturers and supervisors who were brilliant. But I tried to avoid everyone else.
- [34:49]
Matt (Interviewer)
So did you live on your own?
- [34:51]
Chris Packham
I lived with my. Initially I lived with my girlfriend at the time and I'd moved away from home at that point and we lived together and I went to university in Southampton where I grew up, because it could never have gone away. I wouldn't have been able to cope with that amount of change. I was very fortunate. I got an offer to go to Southampton on account of some of the work that I was doing. I was studying badgers at the time and I'd got quite a lot of data. I mean, one of the reasons that I was able to do that was because my biology teacher at secondary school, he just basically got me into proper science at a much younger age. So I, I was quite a precocious young scientist. I was publishing stuff, I wasn't brilliant or anything, I was just given brilliant guidance by him. And that meant that by the time I applied to go to university they were thinking, God, this bloke's doing stuff that people that leave in here aren't doing. So I got that offer. But again that was very fortunate because I would never have survived going away to another university at that point. That was one of the most difficult and challenging periods. That and leaving university were the most, I suppose the most difficult things.
- [36:04]
Matt (Interviewer)
So why was it such a challenging time?
- [36:06]
Chris Packham
I mean, I thought I was wrong, I thought I was broken. I thought it was, you know, I mean, statistically that made sense. Everyone else seemed to be the same, I seemed to be the one that was different. It had to be my fault and I did see it as my fault. And it generated quite an, an intense self loathing. I mean, I despised myself, you know, like I wanted, I kind of wanted to fit in but then I kind of, as soon as then I kind of didn't, if you know what I mean. But that the craving to be accepted and understood by people of my own age, which was never realized, was something that was really hard to deal with. And as I say, I got to the point when I, after sixth form, which was just horrendous, I needed a management system, I needed that degree, I wanted that, I needed a zoology degree. I've made up my mind about that. And also I was really defiant. I wasn't going to be robbed of an opportunity because that opportunity was on the table because I couldn't deal with the social situation. So I was determined to do it at all cost, but the cost was that I had a very unconventional life as a student.
- [37:28]
Matt (Interviewer)
What was your management system, then?
- [37:30]
Chris Packham
Not talking to people. I'd say 20 pps twice a day to the bus conductor. I'd arrive at the lecture first. I'd sit at the front so I didn't have to look at anyone. I'd wait for them to leave, then I'd leave. I tried to get to the next lecture because before everyone, I just plowed everything into doing, trying to get straight A's for every single essay that I did. I totally fixated on the academic work so that I wasn't interested in the social side of anything that was going on. That was it, really. And then by the time I got to the third year, there were two or three people who I just did speak to. I'd sort of broken through that barrier in a library somewhere. But again, it was always quite hard from that point onwards, because when I was into something, I was so into it, I was never going to meet anyone else that was that into it. And so I could equally be sort of quiet, quite, I don't know, callous, and say, what would I have got from those relationships? Anyway, When I first met Charlotte, of course, this was many, many years later, and I remember we'd known each other for a little while and we were sat at her place on the Isle of Wight and she said, should we go and see so and so and so and so tomorrow? And I said, what for? And she said, well, because they're our friends. And I said, yeah, but what do we need to see them for? Is that something happening? She said, no, no, we could just pop around to see them have a chat. And I said, I don't want to have a chat, I don't need to have a chat with them. What am I going to get out of that? What am I going to chat about? That's going to. That's what it's like. So it's not an abusive thing. I don't need to be given something or to have to take something from someone. But if there's nothing there, which is on offer, which stimulating to me, then why am I going to be interested? I'm not.
- [39:41]
Matt (Interviewer)
So that feeling in your early 20s where you just felt like you were not like everybody else, how did you pull yourself out of that? How did you start to feel that that was okay, or has that never happened?
- [39:56]
Chris Packham
Well, so the first thing that was advantageous was before that was the whole punk rock thing kicked Off. Because that, in very simple terms, that allowed me to look physically different. I'd already come to realize that there was something different. I didn't know what it was, but I could then dress differently. And I could therefore outwardly say, I'm not like you. And the interesting thing about the punk movement is that I think a lot of people imagine it as like a massive youth movement. But it wasn't. It was tiny. So in sort of 76, early 77, there were a handful of punk rockers. You know, most of them were in London or the suburbs. Outside of that, even in the major cities, there were just a handful, you know. So in Southampton, I can remember the days when there would have been about 15 of US punk rockers, you know. And then it grew, obviously, throughout sort of later 77, 78. And it became much a broader scene. But, you know, that by sort of dyeing my hair and wearing, like, very, very different clothes. And I know, again with the benefit, it's difficult to explain to people now, but in 1977, if you bleached your hair and put on a spiky studio motorcycle jacket and really tight trousers, you stood out and people didn't like you. And that was great for me because people did cross the street when they were walking towards me on the pavement. And it wasn't that I was physically intimidating. It was just that I was so different. They didn't understand me. And that was, for me, was a manifestation of exactly the way that I felt. So that was empowering. Then there was the energy around the music. And everyone thought it was always about spitting and destroying, and it wasn't. It was about creativity. It was about, you know, people that couldn't afford synthesizers and, you know, just getting guitars and writing songs about girlfriends they'd never had in garages. It was real life, you know, really spoke about, you know, the life that I was living. A bit like the smiths in the 80s and Billy Bragg Forever. They were songs that came, you know, essentially from supermarkets on the street. And they were about, you know, experiences that I understood. I didn't understand anything about ELO or God, any of that garbage. So that didn't speak to me, but that other stuff did. So that was the first thing. And I suppose it was about slowly. It's about confidence. It's about having the confidence to acknowledge that although there were difficulties in your life and there are limitations, there are also opportunities. To the extent that I often say my autism's a bit like a gift. Only sometimes when you open it, you don't get what you want. So that's the way it is. It's sometimes extremely challenging and it presents difficulties to this day. I mean, it's something that you can learn to manage and manage more skillfully on a sort of a day to day basis. And obviously that does become easier as you become more practiced at it and it becomes more of a habit as an adult. But ultimately, of course, it never goes away. I create a space where essentially I can feel comfortable because I've made it, I'm in control of it. But it's a space which isn't entirely comfortable for other people. And so as a consequence of that, it's my way of controlling the fact that really I just want to be there on my own, you know. And ultimately what I accepted long ago is that, and I will say this to Charlotte, you know, I'm best on my own, you know, because then I'm not being judged by anyone. I don't have to judge myself. I can just be entirely comfortable. And of course those people that are closer to me come closer to that point. I've just been away for 10 days in Spain going to art galleries and I arrive before they open and I'm the last person being kicked out. And I do that on my own because I need to entirely within my own time and need immerse myself in the subjects that I'm interested in. And that's not something that I can do with Charlotte, the woman that I love and share my life with, because she wants to go to have lunch, she wants to go to the gift shop. I mean, she wants to look at that painting over there and, you know, and to have those periods where I can just take total control has become a very important sort of, you know, thing when it comes to sort of staying on the rails. Basically.
- [44:46]
Matt (Interviewer)
When you say staying on the rails, what does it look like, not being on the rails?
- [44:50]
Chris Packham
Well, not being on the rails is, you know, has been, you know, very difficult at times. I mean, there isn't. Neurodiversity isn't a mental health condition. But we know obviously that groups of neurodiverse people are more predisposed to mental health difficulties sometimes for very obvious reasons. Higher suicide rates speak to higher levels of, of depression and the inability for those people to possibly find the help that they need as rapidly or as adequately as possible. So I've been to some pretty dark places and difficult times, and in later life I realized that. And I also realized that I needed to be able to manage those sorts of things. And so I've therefore sought therapy which had proved to be. Has proved to be enormously valuable.
- [45:47]
Matt (Interviewer)
Is that traditional psychotherapy you've done?
- [45:49]
Chris Packham
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I didn't do that until I was in my 40s. And I, to be honest with you, I didn't have the mindset for that. And there wasn't the opportunity for that. Had that been available, and it should be available to obviously to far younger people now, then I think it would have had a. My life might have been a lot easier at times, you know, but again, you know, not everything has to be easy. I'm very accepting of the fact that things come, things go. Life's a roller coaster. I've never been able to generate happiness, but I've been happy. So that's my outlook. And I have very few complaints about. Apart from the fact I've got a bad back, which is really annoying. I've got very few complaints. Complaints about my life. Managed to have some extraordinary opportunities that I never dared dream of in that little bedroom in Middenbury. And I've never and will never forget that.
- [46:55]
Matt (Interviewer)
You know, given what you said about or the picture that you painted of the child that you were. It does seem really surprising to me that. I mean, certainly I have very early memories of you being on tv on the really Wild show in front of an audience of millions of people. Tell me about that. How did that come about? How did you get into tv?
- [47:19]
Chris Packham
Well, just by accident, I had intended to stay in the academic system. But by the time I got to my undergraduate degree again, the complex of those difficulties had made it obvious to me that that wasn't going to be the best thing for me to do. So I had arranged to do a PhD, but I very sadly and with great difficulty canceled that. I took some great advice from my supervisor at the time. And so then essentially I was an unemployed, antisocial ex punk rocker in 1983 and 4. And I was very fortunate to get a job working as a camera assistant for someone who was making wildlife films. And then I started making some films myself. And then I heard about an opportunity for the really Wild show, which was a kids science program in the 80s. And I kind of sort of forced myself onto the program by demanding an audition and harrying the producer, who was another really great man. And he gave me a job. So it was out of necessity, basically. I didn't have any money. I was on and off the dole the whole time. I'd started taking photographs and I needed money for. For petrol to drive my rusty Renault 16 TL around the country and to buy Kodachrome 64 for the camera and one lens that I had because I was determined to do something at that point. I was wanting to radically change wildlife photography and make it more. Inject some art into it. I'd always been interested in art since I was a kid. And I just needed money. That's what it came down to. It wasn't something. It wasn't an aspiration of any kind. I remember telling my sister that I'd got this job, and we were walking down through a park in Southampton to hmv, the record shop, and I said, oh, by the way, I think I've got a job making a children's TV program. And she said, doing what? And I said, well, presenting. And she said, oh, thank goodness for that. Now you can bore the entire world rather than just us, you know. So that was it, really. And I mean, there was no formal training or anything, but typically it was the days of vhs. So I recorded loads of nature programs and Alan Wicker and Branofsky. I recorded all those sorts of communicators. And I sat there with a notebook and I looked at the way that they communicated, and I looked at how television was made. I looked at how they cut it and how long the shots were and how these people behaved. And I broke it down sort of scientifically to try and understand how that job would need to be done. Which is typical, Chris, basically murder to dissect and then understand it to the nth degree. Yeah.
- [50:19]
Matt (Interviewer)
So interesting. That's your approach to everything, actually, isn't it? Just to study it as much as you can.
- [50:25]
Chris Packham
Yeah. I've just been in art galleries and I mean, I have to understand how the paintings work, you know, and I have to firstly. So I firstly look at them and, you know, I mean, I don't not enjoy art on that level. Some art I can look at and I think, okay, all I need to do with this piece is to actually enjoy it. Cause that's what it's there for. That's its mission, you know. But then I think, okay, why am I enjoying it? How can I maximize that enjoyment? How has the artist shaped this piece so that that can happen? Is there anything he or she could have done better? How is it working? What's the history of that? How did they come to that idea? Did they get that idea from someone else? Is that a modification of an idea? Who shaped it? Who stuck with it? It, you know, and that I find, you know, really interesting. So when I go, I don't listen to the, you know, the audio tours. I never do audio tours. Never. You know, because these pieces are representations of, you know, the artists have given something. They've given something extraordinary. They've taken something from their environment, from their experience. They personalized it, they've made it unique. They put it, I don't know how, maybe you say, on a canvas, right? And they've given it to the world. That's an extraordinary gift, and I want to receive that my way. I'm not interested in what the audio tour says, so I want to look at it and break it down and understand it from that point of view. So I look at the color and I look at the shape and I look at the composition, all the obvious stuff. And then I look at how they come together, and then I sort of think, okay, how does that make me feel? What am I learning from that? What am I feeling from that? And all the while, as you can see, I'm just sort of disappearing further and further down a tube into that painting. And what that means is that the rest of the world, Putin, trump everything else that's been going on in the last couple of weeks. I have no idea, because it can't get in because I'm so in that one space. So I went to see Las Meninas, the Velasquez painting. It's not my sort of thing at all, but it's a very famous painting. It's interesting on a number of levels. First thing is, I look at it and I realise that the top half of the painting has got nothing in it. It's a huge painting. But if you wanted to, you could get a Stanley knife or a chainsaw and you could cut the top off, right? And essentially, you would lose none of the content, but you would lose the painting. Because the top half of the painting, not having anything in it, is all about what happens in the bottom half of the painting. So it's about those sorts of things. And, you know, that's always been my approach to. To everything. Nature, architecture, art, history, you know.
- [53:12]
Matt (Interviewer)
So how long would you spend looking at that last quest for?
- [53:15]
Chris Packham
Probably in total, over three. Goes about an hour and a half.
- [53:19]
Matt (Interviewer)
So this house we're in now, how long have you been here for?
- [53:23]
Chris Packham
Four years? Yeah, four years.
- [53:25]
Matt (Interviewer)
Okay. Why here? Because we're in the New Forest itself, it seems to me. Why do you want to live in the forest?
- [53:33]
Chris Packham
Well, I was taken here. I grew up on the other side of Southampton. But, you know, this was always been a Place that I'd wanted to come to as a kid because of the wildlife that was here. So I'd be badgering my dad to drive me out at weekends to see the birds and bugs and bees and butterflies and things. So it's an area that I've known all of my life. I mean, the key thing for me is that houses have always been spaces where I can be comfortable and I can control things, but my real home's place been outside and, you know, and I thought I'd found a difference of that when I moved to France. I bought a house in France, and I really loved the house, the house itself. But I soon came to realize that, you know, I did like the house, but I liked where it was even more, you know, and although I live here and we've rewilded the garden and you can walk out the gate into the national park, I get in the car every morning and I drive five minutes around the corner, and I go back to the woods where I lived with Itch and Scratch, my previous poodles, and where Sid and Nancy grew up. And I go walking there because, you know, that's my real home, as it were.
- [54:44]
Matt (Interviewer)
Does Charlotte live here with you, or does she just come and visit?
- [54:48]
Chris Packham
She spends a lot more time here now than she did. She has her own house, which she loves in East Cowes on the Isle of Wight. It's very different than this. Charlotte reads a magazine called Enki. And Enki is a magazine full of bland Scandinavian properties where everything is beige, cream, black, occasionally white. You never see a picture on the wall. And she loves all that stuff. She loves all of those natural colors, natural fabrics, lack of detail. That's where she finds her comfort. Ironically, she lives in an older Victorian house. But it's lovely. It's got all sorts of shapes, nooks and crannies. And it really is sort of Charlotte. You know, it's quirky, and so she loves it there. I mean, if I'm working. I mean, we share the dogs and she's got her rabbits, so she necessarily spends time here. But she likes. She likes a bit like me. She likes going home. She's just been. I mean, obviously, if I'm away, she goes. She goes home. And sometimes she's at home and I'm here.
- [56:02]
Matt (Interviewer)
Is it fair to say that you like living alone?
- [56:08]
Chris Packham
I mean, I like having time on my own. You know, obviously, in a relationship with Charlotte, like spending time with her. We sort of share our lives together, but, you know, I think both of us recognize that we, you know, it's of value to our relationship to have time when we're not together. You know, absence. My mum used to say this ridiculous thing. I always, absence makes the heart go fonder. It's absolutely true. I'm afraid it's really that simple. I've just been away for these 10 days and, you know, on the final day, I get really excited about seeing Charlotte. You know, things I want to tell her, things I want to show her. Her. She'll say, you know, did you miss me? And it's not like I'll be walking down the street in Madrid on the way to the Prado and think, God, I wish Charlotte was here, because I didn't. Because she'd be wanting to go to the bloody gift shop. And I don't go to the gift shop in the Prada, you know, so it's not like that. But, yeah, we share our lives together. We love very much. But I think we both recognize that a strength in our relationship is having our own spaces. And with joking apart, Charlotte doesn't like my decor. I don't. I mean, she dislikes my decor. I don't dislike her decor at all. But, you know, it's just not mine. So, again, that helps. We can both express ourselves in our own homes, and we're very fortunate that we, you know, we can afford to, you know, live like that.
- [57:34]
Matt (Interviewer)
Because you kindly showed me around the house earlier and. And you described yourself as liking and enjoying art that is somehow provocative, maybe a bit offensive, maybe what other people would find challenging. And you surround yourself with that in your home. Why do you do that, do you think?
- [57:55]
Chris Packham
Well, I mean, there are things in here that I just like, and I have got a few things that you could say were actually just decorative. I don't really like, like decorative art. I think art has to say something. I like things. I mean, I also cycle a lot of it. A lot of it's not on the wall and it gets moved around, you know, not as much as I'd like, but just because I don't have time. I've never really found the need to be comfortable. I've always worried about contentment because I think complacency might come with it. And if you're content and complacent, then you're obviously not going to be doing what you need to be doing. So, yeah, I do like sort of challenging spaces. I have to be very clear. I don't choose pieces of art because I think they're gonna be offensive to other people. I choose pieces of art because I find them challenging, and they're probably more challenging than most other people might want to confront. So they see that as being a bit weird. Why make a space where it's, you know, you're not. I mean, I don't know, I go to people's houses and they've just got a piece of nothing on the wall. And I just sort of think, what a space. What a waste of space. Why not put something there you can think about, or something there which is really beautiful that you can enjoy every day? And I've got. I've only got, like. I've got to be very honest with you, I think I've got one piece of art. There are other pieces that I'd aspire to, but I don't own them. But I've got one piece of art which I could absolutely tell you that every day that I've looked at it, I've enjoyed it, and I've had it for about, I don't know, 20 years, I suppose.
- [59:34]
Matt (Interviewer)
What is it?
- [59:34]
Chris Packham
It's a Bridget Riley print. It's a print by Bridget Riley, and I used to have it on the wall opposite me. So I woke up every morning in the farm and looked at it, and every day I woke up and looked at it. It made me feel good.
- [59:47]
Matt (Interviewer)
Why do you think it did?
- [59:48]
Chris Packham
Well? Because of the shapes and the colors and the patterns. It's clever. It looks different in different light. I think it offers me, although it's very simple in the fact that it's a piece of what used to be called op art, I think it's something that can be reinterpreted through your own mood. So it's one of those things where you can project yourself onto it. You don't have to take everything from it. You can give something to it and of your own time, space and mood, and it offers you a different perspective. And aside from that, it is actually just very, very beautiful. I love it. It's the. You know, it's the piece that would go in the. In the arc.
- [60:31]
Matt (Interviewer)
I mean, I've got to say, you really, really surprised me in one particular way coming here, because I think that I would have expected you to find a colorful, busy environment with some quite sharp edges going on, some provocative artwork to be quite challenging for you to live with with, obviously being someone who, on a sensory level, you know, gets quite triggered by things. So how do you explain that?
- [61:04]
Chris Packham
Well, you know when you're watching a horror film and you put your fingers in front of your face, but you can't resist peeping through them. Yeah, I think it's a bit like that. I think it's a lot about being on. Being on edge. It's that, you know, like when you're at school and you would lean back on the chair and you keep leaning, you keep leaning, you get to that point where it just starts to fall. That's my favorite point. It's that feeling when you just start to fall. So I think that, you know, it's. Here's another thing. So I will watch certain sequences from films, like wait for it, right? You know, prepare yourself for ridicule. Transformers and Pacific Rim, right? Charlotte says they're films for 12 year old boys and she's absolutely right. The narrative's awful, but visually they are so unbelievably complex and unbelievably quick. They're almost visually incomprehensible. You just can't get the details, you know. Yo, yo Kasami's infinity rooms. I was in one the other day and in fact I got up every morning and went. So I was the first person in there. And I could live in one of those rooms. I said to Charlotte, do you know what? I could build one of those. I don't think it would cost that much to build. Just need a small square room and it needs to be about sort of, I don't know, 4 meters by 4 meters. And she said, what would you do with it? I said, I put my desk in there, just working there. And she said, wouldn't you get bored by it? She said she'd go out your mind. It's like a torture chamber. And I sort of thought, no, I wouldn't, no, I just have the lights flashing and stuff.
- [62:43]
Matt (Interviewer)
I mean, that's extreme, isn't it? Do you ever get panic attacks? Have you had.
- [62:50]
Chris Packham
I mean, I get extremely anxious sometimes, but no, not those sorts of full on panic attacks, no.
- [62:56]
Matt (Interviewer)
But do ever any kinds of environments make you feel anxious?
- [62:59]
Chris Packham
And it's more sort of series of events. I mean, obviously there are environments that I don't find comfortable. A classic one. And everyone says this. Well, not everyone. Many autistic people say supermarkets. And that's because of the, you know, the terrible mixture of smells and textures and colors and lighting and sound. I mean the whole thing is like that is just Guantanamo shopping. You know, it's just a render. Bookshops. I struggle with bookshops, although I love books.
- [63:29]
Matt (Interviewer)
Why bookshops?
- [63:30]
Chris Packham
Just a mess that's badly ordered. The taxonomy of bookshops has never Been sorted out by someone who's sane. But no, it's more sort of sequences of events, you know. So I fret about things where I think I might lose control. So if I'm gonna get on a train, I mean, I get the train to Southampton the whole time, I know that I'm gonna get a seat. I know I can get a seat facing the right direction. But if I'm going, you know, anywhere else, I have to book seats and things like that, you know, I want to.
- [64:01]
Matt (Interviewer)
Because you need to face the right direction.
- [64:03]
Chris Packham
Yeah. And because I need to work, so I can't be standing up, so I need to be able to get a seat. So I don't want to be in a position where I'm going to be anxious about being on a train and having to stand up for four hours and not get any work done. So it's those sorts of sequences of things like that that I find that those are the things that most often generate anxiety.
- [64:26]
Matt (Interviewer)
So it's never anything sensory. I mean, what about acoustics or things like that?
- [64:31]
Chris Packham
No, I'm lucky. Acoustics don't bother me. It's the visual things that bother me. It's being in those sort of really complex visual spaces where nothing works or where there's something broken. So if I go into a room and I've got to spend time there, say I'm, like, doing a talk or something like that, or I was in court the other day. I go into a courtroom. I've got to spend a couple of days sat in there. The first thing I have to do is build that room. I have to look at everything. I count everything. I know the shape of everything. So I build that space so I know everything about it. I know that there's six lamps in that, and one of them's blown in that one. And I know that those books are over there and the two of them lying down, and one of them's back to front, and then one of them's upside down. And I know that. And I sort of build that entire room until I understand. Understand it quite quickly. It doesn't take long, and. And then I can sort of be more comfortable in it.
- [65:24]
Matt (Interviewer)
That is so interesting. So actually, it's a.
- [65:27]
Chris Packham
It's a.
- [65:28]
Matt (Interviewer)
For you. It's about disorder, isn't it?
- [65:30]
Chris Packham
It's.
- [65:30]
Matt (Interviewer)
It's almost like you're trying to sort of dial it.
- [65:33]
Chris Packham
Well, it's not. It's not about the. I don't care. The book's upside down. I just need to know. It's upside down.
- [65:37]
Matt (Interviewer)
Okay.
- [65:38]
Chris Packham
And I just need to know. It's that book that's upside down. And, you know, and, and. And I just need to know all of that space. I mean, ideally, of course, if my room, I go over and put it up, I'll put it the right way up, but, you know, it's not my room. I don't need to own that. I don't need to control that space. But I do need to understand it. I've got to be in it. I don't want to be, you know, visually challenged by any aspect of it, by surprise. So I just need to build it. So whenever I go into those spaces, people always say to me, what you're looking at? And I hope, actually I just. Everything. I'm just looking at everything. So then once I've got the lie of all of that, which isn't difficult to do, it happens really quickly, then. Yeah, that's cool.
- [66:23]
Matt (Interviewer)
So it sounds like you had some psychotherapy and you got your diagnosis of autism. What was it, in your 40s?
- [66:30]
Chris Packham
Yeah.
- [66:31]
Matt (Interviewer)
Why did it happen then?
- [66:33]
Chris Packham
Well, it came at the end of that period of therapy, actually. I think it was part and parcel of that. It was about sort of signing up off, to be fair. I had a partner who was a medical professional in the 1990s, and she'd said to me she was doing a course, and she said, I think you fit these criteria. And we had conversations about it, and I found some notes that I'd made about it, and I'd pretty much sort of thought, yeah, there's a very good chance that that could be the case. And that was in the 90s, and it wasn't until. Until 10 years later that I had that therapy. And then obviously that was very much part of that. And so I think in terms of, like, wrapping, that it's never really wrapped up, but bringing that part of it to some sort of conclusion, then getting the diagnosis was important. And had you asked me at the time and people did, and they said, was it a help? And I would have said, no, it wasn't making any difference. I kind of figured it out. And I'd had a management strategy to deal with most aspects of my life. Life clearly not adequately, otherwise I wouldn't have been in therapy in the first place, but whatever. But I only know, like, a couple of people who I, you know, from the. From that period in the early 2000s that I still see today, and they both say, you know, it changed you quite radically. And I think one of the key things was Having the confidence to talk about it and also to say to stop doing things or to do things that previously I wouldn't have done. So I would have, you know. You know, I would have done things like gone to parties with people I didn't know. I would have gone for meals after work. I would have gone to weddings with people I didn't know. And I'd have hated them and suffered. And I would drink too much alcohol to try and anesthetize the situation. Whereas now, of course, I just say I'm not going. You know, Charlotte struggled to get me to go to a wedding. So I think it's having that sort of confidence. And certainly in a working environment, I will say to people, would it be okay if I do my part of our job in this manner? Because I'll be able to do it more effectively.
- [68:46]
Matt (Interviewer)
What would that look like then?
- [68:48]
Chris Packham
Really simple things. So when we do things like the watches, we have a morning meeting which everyone attends. Very democratic. It's great. And we all sit down and we discuss the content of the program. And everyone chucks ideas around to see if we can best make it work. And I just want to sit in the same place. And if I travel in a vehicle, I want to sit in the same seat in the same vehicle. And it sounds really trivial, but again, it's just that control thing. So if I can control 1 square meter of desk space in front of me first thing in the morning, which is not a time really when I want to be confronted by large numbers of people, then that house, and no one cares, I just. Everyone just accepts it now that if that's wherever I choose to sit down on day one, and I just want my pen and my laptop and my bit of paper and that's it.
- [69:38]
Matt (Interviewer)
Can I ask you, that position that you're choosing to sit in.
- [69:43]
Matt (Host of Homing Podcast)
Is that.
- [69:44]
Matt (Interviewer)
To do with the position of the chair, or is it the fact that you chose it first time and you want to have it again?
- [69:49]
Chris Packham
If I had option, I sent no one else in the room. And so I would choose a position which best suited me being able to understand the environment, the complexity of that environment. It might be to do with the perspectives of the building or something like that. So I would find the most comfortable place for me to be physically in there. And then I would sit there, and then I would want to sit there the whole time. Cause I'd chosen that place and then just having that habit. But no one complains about that. They don't even think it's funny. They just Think it's the way. Way people like me are. I mean, I'm really lucky working at the BBC and with the teams of people I work in, obviously science, then I think there's quite a broad understanding of neurodiversity. And if there isn't, people are always open to those sorts of conversations and they're quite forgiving. Every now and again, I'll do something which I probably shouldn't, like some info dump. I just talk at someone for five minutes about the Civil War or something and. And they don't really want to know about the Civil War. And then I'll suddenly wake up and think, oh, yeah, I only came in here to get a biscuit and I'm just. Just giving you a lecture on the Civil War. But they. But they kind of like, you know, sometimes I'll see them laughing. Right. But I know them, so they're not laughing at me. They're just laughing because they know I've forgotten, you know?
- [71:07]
Matt (Interviewer)
Yeah, forgotten. That's played the game for a bit.
- [71:10]
Chris Packham
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it did happen the last time I was working that with two women that I've worked with for a long time. Time. And we all have a laugh about it afterwards, but at the time, it's a sort of stress thing. I hadn't seen them for a while and that happens.
- [71:25]
Matt (Interviewer)
So, I mean, this is also interesting to me personally, because I was diagnosed as autistic myself about a year ago. So similar to you, actually, in my 40s, really not understanding so many things about myself as I went through life. And it's really helped me to, I think, piece it together a lot, especially like you. I found my kind of late teens, early 20s, very challenging. And I think that's obviously a period where your brain's going through a big shift. Anyway, what I'm so interested about this conversation, particularly, is the way it manifests itself for me, environmentally is very different than it is for you. There are certainly some crossovers there. But I was asking you about your sitting position, for example, because I went to a restaurant in New York recently and I sat with my back to the room. And as you know, that's a lot more challenging than when you can see what's going on in front of you. And it was one of those very loud environments where you can hear people mixing drinks and there's stuff clattering on the bar and there's loud people next to you and behind you. And I sort of experienced it acoustically as kind of like bombs going off behind me and Things arriving over the shoulder rather than things that you can perceive with your eyes. You know, that's what I find the most difficult thing is when I can't see to be able to process it visually.
- [72:44]
Chris Packham
Yeah.
- [72:44]
Matt (Interviewer)
Do you see what I mean? Does that ring a bell with you?
- [72:47]
Chris Packham
Yeah, it does. Because I don't like surprises. So one of the worst things about being a child and being a child is terrible, let's face it, right? Is because you don't have choice. So I remember I'd be in my room and doing something, reading a book, making an air fixed model. And then one of my parents would come in and say, say, we're going. And it would be like, oh God, like the blue touch paper. We're going, right? So where are we going? When are we going? How long are we going there for? I mean, do you know what I mean? It's just like so bad. And so what I did with Megs, who's not autistic, I would always say to her, right, next week we're going to go to such and such. And then on Friday I'd say, remember next week I said we were going so and so weekend, right? On Wednesday morning we're going such and such. Tuesday, tomorrow. Don't forget that tomorrow we're doing so and so. The whole thing would just be built up in a series of steps. So there was never a surprise for her. She always knew what she was going to be doing. She knew where she was going to be going, she knew what she had to wear and all those sorts of things. And although it was unnecessary, Meg's neurodiversity and the fact that she's dyslexic, but she never had the problems that I had with those sorts of things. But that was a means of me manifesting the behavior that I so wish my parents had done. Because like you say, when you've got your back, when you can't predict what things are going to happen because they come as surprises, therefore you're not managing them, you're not controlling them, I don't think. And another one is. So when I first met Charlotte, we, we'd have to go to a supermarket, right? So I would park right on the other side of the car park. And she would say, why are you parking over here? And I said, it's just easy to park. But it's not easy to park. I can park cars. Been parking cars for X years. It was because if I could park as far away from the door as possible, walking between the car and the Door of the supermarket just gave me that time. Time to start thinking, right, this is going to be pretty bad. This is what I'm going to smell. This is what it's going to be like. This is it, right? It's a raid. Got to get in there, get the trolley, get the food, get out. How am I going to do that? And just walking across the, you know, 200 meters to there just gives you that time to reduce the surprise. And I think that's, again, you know, that's another thing that I've learned. You're going to go and talk to a group of 2,000 people. People. Okay, I start thinking about that, and I don't think about it too far in advance now, but, you know, I think, okay, I'm going to go into a room, there's going to be 2,000 people in there. I'm going to do this, this and this. This is how I'm going to manage it. And so knowing in advance, you know, again, is. Is a way of. Even if it's going to be challenging, if you know in advance it's going to be challenging, you're in a better position if you're sat in a restaurant. You don't know what's going on behind you. People just, you know, all of a sudden something appears over your shoulder. You're not. You're not prepared for it, are you?
- [75:50]
Matt (Interviewer)
That's so interesting about the supermarket. I do something similar with trains. So I'll always sit in the front carriage, which means I can walk all the way along the length of the platform and I can assess each carriage as I go and see who's in it, how many people are in it and how comfortable it looks.
- [76:06]
Chris Packham
Yeah, well, that's it, isn't it? Control, isn't it?
- [76:08]
Matt (Interviewer)
It is, yeah.
- [76:10]
Chris Packham
And basically what it is, I think, is that you've formulated a practice walking the length of the train, sitting in the first carriage, which again is. That's, in a way, you've got a method, you've got a format. And having a format means you're in control because you're employing your format, something that you've devised, you own it, you're going to employ it, and, you know, it works for you in the main in case they're all filled up with football hooligans and now don't get on the train. But, you know, but the. So again, you know, I think there are real parallels there, because that's about having that. It's a process, isn't it?
- [76:46]
Matt (Interviewer)
It's a process And I think that the really difficult thing is when you introduce another human being and their agenda into something, which is why you're describing spending a lot of time on your own. Because if you're with your partner and they say, let's just sit on this carriage and. And went out with my wife Faye. I said, look, Faye, let's just go down the end. She says, we don't need to because when we get off the other end, we're much closer to the gate and it's, you know, and then you have a long conversation about why you just want to go to the front.
- [77:14]
Chris Packham
Yeah. But then don't you say to your partner. So I would say to Charlotte, this is why I need to do. This is the difference of like, this is what people say that I changed when I had my diagnosis. Rather than just sort of like either give in and feel bad. Bad. Right. Or feel uncomfortable or just say, I'm not doing that. I want to sit here. Right. And that basically means you sort of being didactic and bullying, you know, so now, so now, you know, I would just get, I have to, I would just explain everything to Charlotte. This is what I want to do. This is what I want to do. It, this is why this, this, this, this and this. I'm not saying she's always happy about it because sometimes she might put up a kind of case, as your partner might, and say that's not a rational thing to do because it means we're going to be last off the train. But I think that having that confidence as an adult to be able to explain to people why that process is important to you and why going through that process, even if you don't get 100% the outcome you want, but going through that process is part of that system of life management.
- [78:20]
Matt (Interviewer)
Management, yeah, exactly. Can I ask you about routines?
- [78:26]
Chris Packham
Yeah.
- [78:27]
Matt (Interviewer)
This may be a long one, I don't know, but.
- [78:29]
Chris Packham
No, no, very much. I mean, when Charlotte's not here, I eat the same food every night.
- [78:36]
Matt (Interviewer)
Okay, what will that be?
- [78:37]
Chris Packham
Whatever there is. Lots of whatever's easy. I don't cook. Charlotte's a great cook and she likes to make food and she sort of turns it into an art form. It's not my bag. So I would eat anything that goes bing after, you know, and. Or I'd have a heat up pizza. So before she went away, I go to, you know, I go and I buy like four. I'm here for four nights. I buy four vegan pizzas. I eat them at the same time with the Same stuff. And I wear the same clothes. I have my indoor clothes. The dogs love that because they know when I put my indoor clothes on, on that I'm not going anywhere.
- [79:15]
Matt (Interviewer)
So hang on to indoor clothes and outdoor clothes so you changes your mind.
- [79:18]
Chris Packham
I just have a. I have an outfit that I wear when I'm in the house.
- [79:21]
Matt (Interviewer)
I see. Oh, so they know you're not going on location or anything.
- [79:24]
Chris Packham
Yeah. But for me it's because I just want to wear the same clothes, you know? You know, they know that. And I have a dog walking. I have dog walking clothes. So I wear the same clothes every day when I go dog walking and they love that as well because as soon as I put those on, they're like, they're flying all over the ceiling, you know, So I don't do it for the dogs. But dogs like routine. It's one of the reasons I like dogs is because they like routine. I like routine. We go through our same routines. We have patterns. They come to me at 6 o' clock because they want some crisps. I always have the crisps at bedtime. They come to me because it's bt, which is biscuit time. They're allowed to share a digestive biscuit. I like the process of it being part of my process of going to bed is sharing the biscuit with them in that routine. So those shared routines are very much an integral part of the relationship that I have with them. Then we go upstairs and the whole thing's patterned. Everything about it where they have the biscuit is the same. What each one of the dogs do in order to get the biscuit, they're not performing tricks or anything is the same. And coming towards the end of the day, having those routines that we go through like that is a great way of settling into a period of relaxation because, you know, I've got the same clothes on, they always have the same biscuit and they have the same bits in the same place and we settle on it and they settle in the same places on the bed and then we do the same stuff.
- [80:50]
Matt (Interviewer)
Comfort, comfort. So what happens if the routine gets thrown out?
- [80:56]
Chris Packham
It's annoying. So imagine it doesn't happen, but imagine not having a, any digestive biscuits at BT time. It's virtually unimaginable, you know. So if it got to 9 o' clock and I was really tired, right, and I realized we didn't have any biscuits and it's pouring with rain and there's hardly any charge in the car, I'd cycle to the, you know, to the local shop to get the biscuits. It just can't happen.
- [81:25]
Matt (Interviewer)
Would you?
- [81:26]
Chris Packham
Yeah, but also, that's a big. About the dogs. It's about not letting them down. They have an expectation. Their expectations are very simple. And my duty is to make them as happy and healthy as possible. And they like that routine. And I don't like the idea of failing them ever. That's really, really important to me. Incredibly important. So, yes, I would. I'd get out and walk naked over broken glass to get digestive biscuits just to make sure that they were satisfied.
- [81:56]
Matt (Interviewer)
The thing is, you're getting so incredibly close to them and their lives are so intertwined with yours. What happens when, inevitably they die, which they do. And of course, you had two previously.
- [82:10]
Chris Packham
Well, yeah. I mean, you know, in the past, that's been disastrous. I didn't learn much from losing the bird. And then my first dog died. Max. I didn't have dogs. I was never into domestic animals when I was a kid. Wasn't interested. Seriously. Rabbits, guinea pigs, dogs, cats. What's the point? They're not interesting. It was all about wild animals. And I had foxes and badgers, but. And you have relationships with them. But bear in mind, I was trying to get them back into the wild as well, so that wasn't. Those animals I was trying to keep forever. And then I got my first poodle, and he lived until he was 15, max. And, yeah, Yeah, I mean, I'll be honest with you, every time I lost dogs up until Itchy and Scratchy, it precipitated a significant mental health episode because I hadn't prepared myself. I know it's ridiculous, but I hadn't prepared myself for that loss. And because of the enormous investment of love for those animals and the dependence that that generated on them being there at the expense of other relationships, I. You know, I mean, obviously Charlotte and I've been together. We're in a much more sort of stable relationship. But when I was young, I didn't have the stability in any, you know, human relationships like that. I'm not just about my partners, but my friends. I've always had my sister, of course, relationships with my parents, always a bit like, you know. So, yeah, no, it was absolutely catastrophic. So when Fish died, that was when I had that course of therapy because I. And I became suicidal. And then I thought, right, okay, I'm going to have more dogs. I can't be in this position again. I need to go through a process of understanding how I got there and how to manage it and how not to go back there. I was lucky enough to take part in some research that was done at Lincoln University, a byproduct which showed that 17% of autistic people who had dogs reported that they had not taken their own life because of a relationship essentially, that they had with their dog, in the main, because they felt that they couldn't leave that dog to be cared by someone else, because no one else could love it as much as they could. And they may well have been right, but it kept them alive. And, I mean, I'm only here because of itch and Scratch and, you know, so as much as there's, you know, the terrible loss and the difficulties that you're confronted with, then I can never underestimate the value that those relationships bring through their stability and the joy that they bring, you know, despite the fact they're barking outside now. But, you know, they. You know, I always used to call Itch and Scratch my joy grenades because I would take them to the woods and let them off the lead and they would run for the sheer joy of running. And I would smile. And there was nothing else on earth at that point that you could say, I can show it to you and it will make you smile. But those two dogs just running for the sheer joy of running, that, you know, joy de vivre, that love of life, just being alive is so uplifting.
- [85:19]
Matt (Interviewer)
You know, you had this horrendous experience where someone set fire to a Land Rover and it exploded outside your front gates and blew your front gates off. Tell me about that. I mean, what do you make of that experience? Now?
- [85:34]
Chris Packham
See that table there and the one that was on the home cinema? And you know the fox bench that we sat on?
- [85:40]
Matt (Interviewer)
Yes.
- [85:40]
Chris Packham
So those are made from the gates.
- [85:43]
Matt (Interviewer)
Right.
- [85:43]
Chris Packham
And the fox bench was made from the. From the gate post.
- [85:47]
Matt (Interviewer)
Okay. So you repurposed them.
- [85:50]
Chris Packham
Yeah. And when the gates burnt, you can't really see it because it's got books on, but it had this lovely sort of mackerel blue, iridescent finish to it. So me and Simon cut up the gates really carefully, and then we screwed them all together, really. They're really fragile. And then I got this guy to set them in resin. I'm going to give that away, that table to someone else, but the one in the home cinema, keep myself. They can blow the gates up if they want. They can burn it down. I'll just make a table and a bench out of it. All they did, really, was add more fuel to the fact that, you know, that that winter after that happened. I just worked harder and harder, you know, I mean, I don't. I can't be 100% certain about who was responsible. Well, you know, who orchestrated it, But I got a pretty good idea and I just sort of thought, right, okay, it's just some gates. I'll just work harder then. You know, I'm very defiant, you know, in that sense, I'm not going to be swayed by that sort of violence.
- [86:56]
Matt (Interviewer)
For those people who are not necessarily familiar with your wider work, why might someone want to blow your front gates off?
- [87:03]
Chris Packham
Because I'm asking people to change their minds more quickly than they either want to or are able to. Because we're in a time of crisis. Crisis. We're in a climate breakdown and biodiversity crisis, which is going to kill our planet and us with it unless we do something about it. So someone, me and others have to stand up and tell the truth. And if you do stand up and tell the truth, people blow your gates up.
- [87:27]
Matt (Interviewer)
Last question. Chris, if I could ask you to define what the word home means to you, what would you say?
- [87:37]
Chris Packham
You know that photo taken on Apollo 8 of Earthrise? I remember seeing it for the first time way back in the 1960s. And the beauty of our planet, that blue, white smeared green planet taken over the very sterile surface of the moon, has never, never, ever left me. And then the other photograph taken from far deeper in space, the pale blue dot, that was taken on the Voyager program when Carl Sagan turned it around and photographed the Earth as it disappeared out of our solar system. And it's just like this tiny one pixel in the sort of columns of light generated by the sun that's home in it. That's our one and only home. We are the. You know, this planet is the only place that we know that there's life, let alone complex life. And I've been fortunate enough to go around this planet and I mean, it's just incomprehensibly beautiful. But equally, we are incomprehensibly lucky to have it. The chances of this happening, when it comes down to the evolution of life on Earth, you know, the serendipity of it actually happening and of us, a conscious organism being here to be able to witness it, are so infinitesimally small. So, you know, absolutely, absurdly, mathematically, you know, immeasurably tiny, that to not value that, you know, strikes me as is insane. You know, this is our home, our one and only home. And it is so amazing. And even if you're not into wildlife, even if you're just think about what we've done. You know, it's easy to say, oh, we're. I hear people say, oh, it's better off. We'll be all gone. We have just a terrible virus. We're messing everything up. No, no. I just stood in galleries where people, people have done remarkable things. They've created remarkable things. We use technologies on a day to day basis. We pick up our phones. They've become such a part of everyday life. We forget that as kids they were just on Star Trek. We are part of that beauty and therefore I can't countenance that we should also be part of its destruction. This is my home, this planet. This shell of a building is a wardrobe storage unit with some food in it which is past the sell by date. That's home. Look at that. Look at the color of that beech tree. So green it hurts.
- [90:39]
Matt (Interviewer)
Such a brilliant answer. Thank you so much. I couldn't have enjoyed that more. It's so fascinating to meet you and to hear your story.
- [90:47]
Chris Packham
Thank you.
- [90:48]
Matt (Interviewer)
I really appreciate it.
- [90:49]
Chris Packham
Thank you.
- [90:52]
Matt (Host of Homing Podcast)
Huge thanks to Chris for welcoming us into his home and thanks very much to all of you for listening. I really hope you found it as.
- [90:59]
Matt (Interviewer)
Interesting as I did.
- [91:00]
Matt (Host of Homing Podcast)
If you want to watch the video version filmed inside Chris's home, head over to YouTube. You'll find us at Homing with Matt. And for those who want to go deeper, you can subscribe to Homing on Patreon where you'll find exclusive home tours with our guests. In these videos, we're not just observing rooms and furniture. We're really exploring the memories and rituals that make a home feel alive. If supporting financially isn't for you, that's completely fine.
- [91:29]
Matt (Interviewer)
Of course. Very happy to have you here.
- [91:32]
Matt (Host of Homing Podcast)
Even just sharing the podcast with a friend or leaving a review really helps us and it means we can keep these conversations going. You can follow Homing on Instagram @homingwithmat to see what's coming up on our show and stay in touch. Homing is an independent podcast produced by Pod Shop with music by Simeon Walker. Thanks again for listening and see you next time.