Wildlife presenter Chris Packham has opened up about his childhood and how it impacted the way both he and his sister, fashion designer Jenny Packham, tackled their career goals
Winterwatch star Chris Packham shared a heartbreaking family realisation. The 64-year-old says he and his sister, fashion designer Jenny Packham, both grew up trying to “satisfy” their parents.
Chris says his mum Rita and dad Colin put a “disproportionate amount of interest” in his own education, leading Jenny to “rebel” against them. However both grew up feeling as though they were “underachievers”, something Chris says made them work harder to “overachieve”.
By the time he became a teenager Chris says he “gave up” trying to impress his parents. On the Homing podcast, he recalled a moment he told Rita he had won a category in a photography contest, only for her to ask if he’d won the whole thing, before saying he can “keep trying”.
The TV presenter went on to say it was an attitude he felt was “harsh” but admits he “doesn’t think it was a bad thing”. When asked if Colin and Rita had ever said they were proud of him, Chris replied: “I don’t recall it to be fair.
” My father was a very fair man, you know. My father was a very fair man but he never saw a job as being finished. If you did something there was always obviously the next step.
“So my dad would acknowledge that I had 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 I wanted to achieve but I’m still trying. “
Chris however believes it is the early work ethic installed by his mum and dad that drove himself and Jenny to the height of their careers. He added:” We were two working class kids, we didn’t have anything, if we hadn’t got up and started doing stuff and worked really hard and believed in a meritocracy and invested in 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 background of needing to always good the extra mile, hundred miles, neither of us would be doing what we’re doing. “
Colin, according to Chris, is what gave birth to his passion for the outdoors. He claims that the pair would “go looking for wildlife or historical remnants” on Sunday morning.
After graduating from college, he took up the position of a part-time cameraman. Before moving on to work on Ourselves and Other Animals, he began his major career in 1983 with The Living Planet and The Living Isles.
His career however took a turn in 1986 when he went on to land a presenting job on The Really Wild Show with Michaela Strachan and Martin Hughes-Games. The long-running children’s TV show had a nine-year spell on the BBC.
He has helmed the BBC’s Springwatch and its fall and winter sister shows since 2009, respectively. Chris will be on BBC Two’s Winterwatch tonight (January 20) starting at 7 p.m.
Source: Mirror
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