‘It’s so great feeling fantastic again’
It’s five years since wildlife presenter Michaela Strachan was diagnosed with cancer. Here, she explains how it changed her view on life and why her dream is now to appear on Strictly!
TV presenter Michaela Strachan on how her cancer diagnosis five years ago changed how she looks at life
This October, Michaela, 53, is back on our screens to present BBC Two’s Autumnwatch, alongside co-hosts Chris Packham, Gillian Burke and Iolo Williams. Presenting the show from the Cairngorms in Scotland means she’s a long way from her home in South Africa’s Cape Town, where she lives with her partner, cameraman Nick Chevallier, and 14-year-old son, Ollie. She also has three grown-up stepchildren.
I enjoy the show so much more these days, because I’ve learned to relax. That’s come with time and, I suspect, age. I used to be very nervous, panicking about making a mistake – it’s live TV, after all. The trickiest thing was getting used to Chris Packham’s ‘games’. We usually present together, and he’d challenge himself by trying to get song titles by The Clash or David Bowie into the commentary. Suddenly, he’d start going off on a tangent and I’d have to steer it back to talking about blackbirds.
Chris and I have a very special
relationship. We have so much shared history, which is probably why our partnership works so well. We met on
The Really Wild Show, when I was about 25, so we’ve seen each other change and grow. We’ve met each other’s past boyfriends and girlfriends, we’ve been through disasters together and we know that neither of us will get upset when we take the mickey out of each other.
We’ve had our fair share of catastrophes
on the show: the worst was when Chris got food poisoning. He started violently throwing up before we went live. I called an emergency team meeting and everyone looked horrified, as I don’t know the scientific facts Chris does! Then, I thought, ‘What’s the worst that can happen? I might look like an idiot, but so what?’ It was the least scientific show we’ve done, but I did it, and I enjoyed it.
What you don’t see on the show is the amount of effort Chris and I put into
what we’re wearing. The producer once said to us, ‘You need to look like you’re going to the same party.’ We laughed, but we follow that rule now. We always check before shows that our outfits don’t clash. We both own green puffa jackets that make us look like Tweedledum and Tweedledee – you’ll be lucky if you see us in those together!
FINDING MY PASSION
People think you have to be passionate about something from the age of three to be passionate about it when you’re
53. I’m proof that you don’t! I grew up wanting to be a dancer and trained at musical theatre school, before going into television. It was only when I landed a job on a nature series called OWL/TV that something clicked. They wanted a children’s presenter to front it, so you didn’t have to know much about wildlife and, to be honest, in those days, I didn’t! But as the series went on, my passion flourished. I don’t think that it’s ever too late to find your calling.
Sometimes, I get sad about what’s happening to our wildlife. Even over the years I’ve been doing the Watches, it’s
noticeable how much harder it is to film wildlife. If we want to make an impact, we have to curb our instinct for greed and be more empathetic. It’s an absurd world that we live in, where lions are bred in captivity so people can shoot them and put their heads on walls, and elephants are shot so tusks can become chopsticks.
JUGGLING ACT
In an average year, I’m away from home
for a total of four months. I can’t pretend the juggling is easy. My general rule is not to be away filming for more than two weeks at a time. The secret, though, is having a supportive partner. I wouldn’t be able to do it without Nick. When I’m away, he looks after Ollie, and when he’s away, I look after Ollie. We’re what you’d probably call a ‘modern’ family.
I can imagine parents at Ollie’s school thinking, ‘Oh my God, she’s away for
how long?’ But he doesn’t know any different. If I noticed anything go wrong in his personality, I’d think again about the way we’re doing it, but the fact is that it is working. Although, he did once say, when Nick and I were away a lot, ‘Do you like Dad still?’ I replied, ‘Yes… most of the time!’
The hardest part is the guilt. Name me a mother who doesn’t feel it! This sounds terrible, but every year I miss Ollie’s birthday because of Springwatch. To make up for it, we have a party before I go and the crew always help put a video message together for him that I send on Whatsapp. He’s a cricket fan, so this year, we did cricket jokes. He loved that.
LESSONS IN LOVE
Nick and I have been together for 18 years now, and I can hardly believe it. We met when I was buying a holiday home in Cape Town. A mutual friend introduced us, so I could get to know some people in the area. I was separating from my ex-husband, Duncan [Chard], at the time, so I wasn’t looking for anything more than friendship, and Nick had been widowed, so I’m not sure he was either. But he took me on a walk up Table Mountain and I remember thinking, ‘Wow, there’s a deep connection with this man.’ When it developed into something more serious, I made Cape Town my home. We’re not married and, to be honest, I’m not the slightest bit interested in it! Nick isn’t either. We’ve both done it before and don’t have the urge to do it again. Nick jokes and says, ‘Having a girlfriend at my age sounds quite sexy, doesn’t it?’ I’m not sure I see it like that, but I think having a child together is a far bigger commitment than marriage.
The biggest lesson I’ve learned about
relationships is tolerance. Of course, Nick irritates me. I couldn’t live with anyone for any length of time without them winding me up. I irritate him, too, but it’s about accepting our differences and not trying to change the other person. There are characteristics of Nick’s that will never change; his lack of ability to cook, for example. The key is supporting each other’s strengths and not getting too annoyed by each other’s weaknesses!
FAMILY MATTERS
Nick already had three children when we met: Jade, who was 13, and 11-year-old twin boys, Tom and Sam – so I was sort of parachuted into this ready-made family. Despite having a deep desire to be a mum, which was why my first marriage ended, it was quite daunting at first. When you’ve had children from birth, you grow with them, but to suddenly be a mother figure to three kids, who have lost their mum, is hard. I remember walking round the supermarket thinking, ‘What the hell do you feed three children?’
I was lucky that they were very receptive to having a new woman in their lives. I’m sure it was very different to how it is for a lot of stepmums, because I wasn’t the ‘other woman’, I was the only woman in their lives. We have wonderful relationships now, and they’re fantastic with Ollie. They’ve helped bring him up, playing the roles of advice-givers and even babysitters at times.
BEATING BREAST CANCER
This year, I’m celebrating five years since being diagnosed with breast
cancer. I can’t tell you how fantastic it feels to be free of it. My diagnosis came after a routine mammogram and it was an incredibly tough blow to take. I wasn’t overweight, I didn’t eat badly or drink too much, I’d always kept fit and
there wasn’t a history of it in my family. I couldn’t help but think, ‘Why the hell have I got it? Why me?’
I decided right from the start that I had
to see the positives. In many ways, I’d been lucky, as the diagnosis was stage one; it was tissue, not even a lump, which meant less invasive treatment
(no radiation or chemotherapy). I was advised to have a double mastectomy, then take a five-year course of tamoxifen. The drugs have made my hair drier and thinner than it was, but the side-effects can be much worse, and I’m 53 now, so maybe my hair was always going to turn out like this anyway!
I didn’t think I felt too emotional about
losing my breasts – I was having a reconstruction after all – but it took a while to adjust to my new body. I found it very difficult to like my ‘new’ boobs, so a friend said to me, ‘Well, name them.’ We called them Pina and Colada, because they were hard like coconuts. I have to say, that really helped!
My confidence has grown since then,
but I feel less feminine now. They’re not mine and they look a bit freaky, so I don’t like people seeing me with my top off any more. I had a massage recently and when the therapist asked me to remove my top, I said, ‘Oh, just to warn you, I look a bit different.’ I didn’t want to scare her. But it is what it is and the reality is that it’s a small sacrifice for the sake of my health.
I carried on working through the whole thing, turning to friends and family for support, but when I finally took a break, I questioned whether I’d dealt with it emotionally. I didn’t want it to come back and bite me in years to come, so I tried something called trauma release therapy. If you go through trauma, you often shake, which is the body’s natural reaction to get rid of stress. That’s what the therapy is all about. I don’t know whether it was the shaking or the fact that I knew I was doing something therapeutic, but it helped me enormously. I haven’t changed my diet or fitness regime, but I won’t take any chances with my health now. Earlier this year,
I was presenting Springwatch when several people, including a doctor, messaged me on social media to say they’d noticed a lump on my throat. I panicked: ‘Is it secondary cancer? How long do I have?’ I immediately saw a doctor, then a specialist and had an ultrasound. When the lady said, ‘It’s just a benign cyst,’ I burst into tears.
My diagnosis has taught me to see life as a bit of a horse race where everyone’s end line is different. For some of us, it’s going to be close, for others, it’s going to be a long way away. You can still have a great race, even if your finish line is earlier.
A CHANGE OF PACE
My life in Cape Town is slower than the one I lead in London, and I relish that. I spend a lot of time outdoors, which is great for my mental and physical health. We live right by Table Mountain National Park, so I walk every week, with friends, Nick or with our rescue dog, Rio, who’s become the centre of everybody’s lives. I find great peace from doing that, and I’m sure you’ll agree that’s not an easy thing to find!
• Autumnwatch returns to BBC Two this October. Michaela has been working with MSD Animal Health on The Big Flea Project; visit bigfleaproject.co.uk
‘My diagnosis was an incredibly tough blow to take’