INTERVIEW
Chris reveals
his close
encounters
Interview by Peter White
To his vast television audience Chris Packham
always comes over as that calm, self-assured
presenter, who is in total control of the
situation.
Chris has built a reputation as one of the
country’s most knowledgeable wildlife experts,
and has captivated viewers with a range of
programmes ranging from ‘The Really Wild
Show’ to ‘Autumnwatch and ‘Springwatch’.
His busy schedule also includes being a nature
photographer and author.
But away from the TV cameras Chris
reckons he is a totally different animal, and
was certainly not in total control when he
experienced a few close encounters of the
wrong kind!
He smiled: “I have to have close encounters
because they are part and parcel of my life. I
have spent a lot of time being scratched and
bitten by animals; you just don’t want the
scratches and bites to be too big. Therefore
you take good advice and calculate the
risks involved. It is in photography that
you get more problems because you are so
pre-occupied with what you are trying to
achieve, and tend to be a bit more neglectful.
“It doesn’t have to be crocodiles and Great
White sharks. It can be camels or lemurs; if
you are doing the wrong thing you can get
into trouble. I have been charged by lions, and
I once had an alligator have a go at me.
“But the most horrific experience was a
prolonged attack by a male baboon in Kenya.
I was lucky to get out of that one without
being very badly injured. We were filming
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in a picnic area where it was used to people,
so it had no natural fear of humans. It was
massive and would have torn me to pieces if
I had done the wrong thing. So it was just
a question of me standing my ground and
shouting at it, which I had to do for a long
time before it went away.”
Chris’s partner is Charlotte Corney, owner of
the Isle of Wight Zoo, and as such he spends
as much time as possible on the Island. He
maintains he was interested in wildlife almost
before he could even walk, ‘crawling around
the garden, picking up insects to examine
them’.
One of his first recollections of the Island
was when he was 12 years old, and he stayed
at Gurnard Pines with a friend and his family.
He said: “It was a particularly poignant visit
for me because I found my first kestrel’s nest,
which was in the pines behind the chalets. I
climbed up to it, and all the birds had fled
apart from one young one which had died.
I picked it up to examine it, and remember
being enthralled by it.
“For the rest of the holiday we spent our
time catching small animals in bottle traps
that we made. Then when I started working
I visited the Island more often, taking
photographs of red squirrels among other
things. There are still areas of the Island that
haven’t changed, and the amount of damage
done to the environment is reduced here, and
that is something of a rarity in the south of
England.
“Not only is there a large population of