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“A puffin is classically, you would have to say, a bird which non-bird-watchers still enjoy,” he says, placing both the toy and the card on a low coffee table in the back room of his large house in Hampstead, north London. The window overlooks a fairytale garden overrun with bushes and grass and artistic installations involving mirrors and bits of string. Inside, the walls and tables are strewn with knick-knacks – tribal masks, ashtrays in the shape of cannabis leaves and a couple of electric guitars propped up in one corner. The puffin blends in seamlessly.
Oddie, who for many of us reignited our love affair with the British countryside and its wildlife, is delighted to be back at the age of 72, especially as he will be making the case for such an endearing animal (in next week’s programme).
He grins. Oddie is entertaining company – jovial, chatty and given to putting on funny voices whenever the anecdote demands it (he does an excellent impression of two male black grouse trying to fight each other like blokes at closing time in order to impress a female).
From there, he went on to become one of the most recognisable faces on our screens, hosting a number of nature shows for the BBC, including Birding with Bill Oddie and Bill Oddie Goes Wild and culminating in the extraordinary success of Springwatch and Autumnwatch, presented alongside Kate Humble on BBC Two, which regularly attracted more than four million viewers.
He remembers growing up in Quinton, a suburb in west Birmingham, and seeing skylarks and yellowhammers when he walked through nearby fields. There were often hedgehogs in the family’s small garden. Nowadays, he’s worried that there will come a point when “wildlife in any abundance or variety is only going to be found in places that are in some way managed or reserved for wildlife – in other words, a nature reserve.
Oddie blames “very greedy humans” for the decimation of various species, but reserves his most forceful ire for the Government. “I think this Government is stunningly ignorant and arrogant,” he says, eyes suddenly serious behind the frameless spectacles.
“The badger cull has had a lot of publicity but basically what you’ve got is scientific research that suggests this is not the way to curb bovine TB. But the Government turn round and say, ‘Right, I see, we did this survey but it hasn’t come up with what we want to hear so we’ll ignore it.’ And that seems to be the general attitude to just about everything.”
It’s clear, listening to Oddie talk about these issues, that no matter whether you agree with him or not, he is an expert communicator. Which makes it all the more baffling that he has been off our screens for so long. Oddie says he can’t understand it, either. He had suffered from bouts of depression for much of his life and when he was dropped from Springwatch just before Christmas 2008, he plunged into despair.
He loved the BBC and was left hurt and baffled by what had happened. He tried to find out the reasons for his treatment but says they only gave him “a waffly statement” with no specific detail.
It wasn’t until he ended up in hospital for much of 2009 that Oddie was finally diagnosed as bipolar. He was prescribed lithium, which he still takes, and as a result now feels “absolutely fine”.
He sounds regretful, a touch wistful. It’s clear he doesn’t want to say anything that might endanger his future relationship with the BBC or the prospect of doing more of the TV work he adores. For the first time in our conversation, he looks away and pinches a corner of skin at the edge of his elbow.
“I could well see that there was an autumn of mania going on and therefore I was probably giving signals out which I didn’t realise and, I imagine, signals were reported back. I think somebody said the public complained I was swearing at a cameraman or a producer when we on location somewhere in a shop. I can’t remember what it was but it’s probably quite likely.”
These days he is aware of the need to look after his mental wellbeing and has a fairly quiet life, involving daily walks with binoculars to watch migrant birds on Hampstead Heath followed by breakfast at a local café. He returns home and fills the bird-feeders in his garden with peanuts, sunflower hearts and live mealworms. Then he sits on one of the sofas in the back room and waits until the birds fly in. From this spot, he watches as chaffinches, long-tailed tits, dunnocks, wrens, blackbirds and ring-necked parakeets gobble up the grub he has left for them. It’s a lovely image.
If he were reincarnated as an animal, I wonder, what would it be? “If I went for cute and not having to make too many decisions, I’d go for a dormouse, I think, because they’re very lovely, very cuddly and everyone would go, ‘Ahh, aren’t they sweet?’ And then you could say, ‘Yes and I’m going to go to sleep now for seven months’.” He pauses. “Seven months and no more decisions,” he says, in a tone of wonder.
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