If you need reasons to be cheerful, Chris Packham’s your man. On a video call from his home in the New Forest, he’s in a bright red top (a fleece, naturally), in front of a painting in all the colours of the rainbow.
And that sums up his mood. ‘I feel like I’m 14 again,’ he smiles. ‘I haven’t had this much time in one place to engage so completely with the community of animals and plants that live around here since I was a teenager. 'So while it’s been terrifying, and scary, I can’t deny that there have been benefits. ‘I’m working from home.
And it’s secluded. I’m a person who can be solitary without being lonely.’ This enthusiasm for the natural world has propelled Chris’s career from working on kids’ programme The Really Wild Show to the