Two creatures of habit
THERE is a wonderful black-and-white image of Chris Packham taken in the Eighties. He is facing an owl. On one level, the two beings in the frame could not look more different – one is a predatory bird with a big dish-shaped face, the other a telly presenter with a white-blonde quiff.
Even if you had seen that picture long before watching CHRIS PACKHAM: ASPERGER’S AND ME (BBC2), you might have felt there was something about the pair that was similar too. Owls are slightly unknowable creatures of the night, inhabitants of abandoned spaces, possessors of remarkable skills. And Chris, as we learned in last night’s brave self-safari film, has a few things in common with them. He lives alone in the New Forest. He is socially awkward. He insists on objects being symmetrically arranged and has a wardrobe full of identical trios of garments.
While these traits, typical of the autistic-spectrum condition Asperger’s Syndrome, keep him apart from the world, they are also linked to his success in it. Immersing himself in nature as a child to escape bewildering human interactions, he developed an obsessive, encyclopaedic knowledge. This might make him a poor conversationalist at parties but it makes him a brilliant wildlife presenter. His senses, so easily overloaded by social settings or crowded streets, are a gift when in the deep countryside, seeking out the whiff of a departed fox.
Watching the rapport he had with lemurs, porcupines and tigers, you wondered if what made him uncomfortable around humans made him supremely comfortable around other species.
It was never as simple as that, though. For a start – as raw and candid recollections showed us – he’d had one hell of a horrid journey up to this point. Travelling to the United States, where electronic and behavioural treatments claim to ‘cure’ autistic traits, he became convinced society needed to change, not individuals.
At Microsoft HQ, he met bosses who realised the contribution autistic-spectrum people made to the tech industry and were devising new strategies to recruit them. It was not a disorder that needed fixing but a unique resource to be valued. Amen to that. But at the same time you had to remember both Chris and the dotcom boffins were exceptional examples.
Chris Packham is a great communicator. He might have had to teach himself that skill in a different way to others but it is there nonetheless. For those people on the spectrum not gifted with outstanding talents or able to find a niche, the future looks more understanding – but not necessarily much better. You cannot blame some people for seeking a cure.
Beginning a new series on the aptly named Wilderness Island, BEN FOGLE: NEW LIVES IN THE WILD (Channel 5) introduced us to Jim and Kim. In contrast to many of the hermits Ben has met during this series, Jim and Kim were chatty and funny and clearly valued contact with the outside world.
It was hard, sometimes, to work out what they were doing there, miles off Australia’s north-western coast in a weather trouble-zone called Cyclone Alley on a rather bare island that seemed no prettier than Southport beach. When Ben suggested Kim, 28, might want other things in life, she agreed. Maybe she did said Jim, 45, and he would probably join her. Not so much new lives as brief intervals.