Autumnwatch brings positive nature to a season of discontent
Michaela Strachan, Chris Packham and Gillian Burke explain to Danielle de Wolfe why the show is the ideal antidote to the troubled times we’re in
AS temperatures dip and British wildlife begins to nestle down for the winter, the hard work is only just beginning for the BBC’s Autumnwatch team.
Returning for two weeks as part of the show’s annual run, the BBC2 staple is once again set to highlight the wonders of the natural world – albeit with a number of Covidrelated tweaks.
“It’s not just a job for us, we absolutely live and breathe it,” says Autumnwatch presenter Michaela Strachan. It’s a statement made all the more poignant by the fact Michaela, 54, found herself locked down in South Africa, where she lives with her family, for the show’s Springwatch edition.
“To not be able to be part of the team because I couldn’t get there was extremely frustrating,” she reflects.
“But I have to say, I felt part of the team because I watched it every day, I was so proud of what they managed to achieve at such a difficult time.
“I have a particularly fantastic location this year. I can forget about the anxiety and the stress; I’m here now and I’m absolutely chuffed to be part of the watches and part of the team.”
The show will feature footage from remote cameras, alongside pre-recorded features and new live segments from presenters across the country.
Autumnwatch 2020 will see Michaela broadcasting from Tentsmuir Forest in Fife, Scotland, a location renowned for its picturesque landscape and thriving seal population.
“I’m going to miss Chris (Packham, her co-presenter), I’m not going to lie, it’s going to be very different,” says Michaela of the new Covid-friendly setup, which sees all four presenters bid farewell to the central studio.
“But because I am doing baby seals, oh boy am I going to go on and on about how cute they are!” she laughs.
Joined by co-presenters Chris, who is set to report from his home in the New Forest, Iolo Williams from the Centre for Alternative Technology in Wales, and Gillian Burke at RSPB Old
Moor in South Yorkshire, the show is set to showcase the true beauty of Britain’s native wildlife.
“Can I be honest with you?” enquires Chris, 59.
“Thinking back to Springwatch, we faced an enormous challenge technically to get the programme on the air. We all faced a challenge in terms of having to adapt to a new way of working.
“Communicating with one another was far more difficult. We couldn’t just go and meet in the portacabin as we normally would. And I think that sometimes, those sorts of tests bring out the best in people because they make everyone sit up and try harder.”
With live cameras located on a wild Scottish island in the Firth of Forth set to capture dramatic footage of grey seals pupping, this time around the show hopes to act as a beacon of light in amongst the uncertainty of Covid.
“The last thing we want to do in our programme is just throw all the negativity at you and add to the Covid problems, the recession problems, the Brexit problems, America problems – because obviously the election is happening during Autumnwatch,” Michaela remarks.
As the nation swaps sundrenched parks for centrally heated homes, Gillian points out that exposure to nature might just provide the dose of positivity we need.
“Hopefully, being able to bring nature to our audience is going to give them that little respite from what has otherwise been a really challenging year,” she says.
Autumnwatch returns to BBC2 on Tuesday at 8pm
‘I’ VE had to learn to blow my own trumpet because – as a black female singer – no-one was going do it for me,” explains Skin down the phone from her home in Ibiza.
As the frontwoman of Skunk Anansie, Deborah Dyer – AKA Skin – offered an alternative voice to the machismo of Brit rockers such as Oasis and Blur during the 90s.
“If I am modest I disappear,” she says.
“I don’t like to sit here and say, ‘I was the first black woman to headline Glastonbury’. That’s not my personality. But one of the ways that racism works is that it erases what black people do... It erases our successes.”
Black, British and queer, Skin, now 53, was a rarity in the fairly homogeneous landscape of 90s pop and rock.
Her autobiography, fittingly titled It Takes Blood and Guts, charts a difficult but warm childhood in Brixton, south London, through to her years in Skunk Anansie.
The book also touches on Skin’s activist work, campaigning against apartheid and for LGBT rights, as well as glitzier turns like her stint as a judge on the Italian version of The X Factor.
Then there is her latest reinvention as a globe-trotting DJ and close relationship with the fashion world.
“I have three brothers so I was raised in a house of boys,” she recalls.
“There was a lot of man energy around. In Jamaican families, in Jamaican culture, if someone is hungry you feed them. If someone comes to your house then you put down an extra plate. That’s cultural. And my mum, a nurse, was like that. Lots of Jamaicans were like that. They showed their love by filling your belly.”
Skin’s memories of Brixton in the 70s and 80s are mixed, she says. The riots of 1981 and 1985 left an impact – spurring her on to activism.
“The negative things that were happening to people were literally happening outside my front door.
Skunk Anansie at the height of their fame in 1999
“You see a lot of things growing up that you just don’t think are very fair, so you want to change things.”
Today, the gentrification of the area is something that concerns her.
“The wonderful thing about Brixton is Brixton Market. But it has been under attack for years now. Eventually we are going to see it disappear because the new people moving in don’t really get it. They don’t really get the black food. They don’t really get that it is supposed to be a bit edgy and a bit messy.”
Skunk Anansie’s musical peak originally stretched from 1995’s Paranoid & Sunburnt to 1999’s Post Orgasmic Chill, before the band split for a decade.
Aided by journalist and friend Lucy O’Brien, Skin began her book before the pandemic, but it was finished during the first months of lockdown.
In September, she announced her engagement to her partner, performer and events organiser Rayne Baron.
“I spent the first four months of proper serious lockdown in New York with my wifey and we literally didn’t go anywhere.
“New York was really serious about it.”
Skin finally made it to London, before arriving in Ibiza about a fortnight before we speak. It’s a jet-set lifestyle, and much of the book explores Skin’s struggle to maintain connection with her family, friends and partners as she tours the world.
Has she got the balance right now?
“Yeah, totally,” she says without hesitation. WhatsApp groups change everything.”
The book offers a fascinating look back at her years in the spotlight. The first act of Skunk Anansie’s career peaked with that slot on Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage in 1999, alongside fellow headliners REM and Manic Street Preachers.
“Headlining Glastonbury for us was a double-edged sword because, if you imagine, we were one of the biggest bands in the UK at the time, and also in Europe,” says Skin.
“Our second album was triple platinum.
“We absolutely deserved to headline Glastonbury in terms of statistics, in terms of record sales, in terms of the size of the band.
“And yet, we had so many journalists that were anti-Skunk Anansie headlining Glastonbury.”
Their detractors dressed up their criticism, she says.
“But what they really meant was there is a black female lead singer and she shouldn’t be singing rock music anyway.
That was what was really behind it.
“You can say that now, but if we had said that at the time we would have been told we had a chip on our shoulder.”
Skin points out a catalogue of black artists or predominantly black groups who could have headlined over the years.
“Goldie could have done it at one point, Dizzee Rascal could have done it at one point, even Eternal could have done it at one point! It’s not that we aren’t there. It’s that we don’t get the dibs and we don’t get seen as someone who can fill a field.”
It Takes Blood and Guts by Skin and Lucy O’Brien is available now.