Chris Packham on his really wild years with Michaela Strachan: “We were real party animals in the 90s and didn’t have a stop button”
These day it's a glass of chardonnay for her and a hot chocolate for him but back then Michaela was a clubber and Chris was the bad boy of nature TV...
To kids of the 90s, Michaela Strachan is known as the smiley face of Children’s BBC nature series The Really Wild Show but for four years before that she was one half of ITV’s late-night clubbing show The Hitman and Her, touring some of the UK’s most notorious after-hours dance venues with Pete Waterman during the burgeoning Rave scene.
Chris Packham, meanwhile – then sporting a peroxide blonde Billy Idol haircut – was known as the bad boy of wildlife TV.
So despite their now (mostly) cosy Autumwatch personas (Packham still has a bit of an edge), perhaps it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that during their years hosting The Really Wild Show together they were quite a pair of animals themselves…
What’s the most “really wild” thing you’ve done together? we ask them in the new issue of Radio Times.
“I couldn’t reveal that,” says Packham. “We were real party animals in the 90s and didn’t have a stop button.”
All that’s in the past, though – especially for Packham. “I still like a glass of Chardonnay after filming,” admits Strachan. “I haven’t seen Chris have anything other than a hot chocolate in recent years!”
Read the full interview with Michaela Strachan and Chris Packham in the new issue of Radio Times, on sale from Tuesday
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