Chris Packham has been given a bodyguard while filming the latest series of BBC’s Winterwatch after “specific threats” were made against him.
The presenter has faced persistent abuse in recent years, including in 2011 an arson attack on his home.
Speaking to the Daily Mirror, Packham said: “A couple of times recently, before the Watches, we have had specific threats for me. So we’ve had a person who is there and stays at the hotel, and then goes with me to the place.” He said the bodyguard accompanied him during and after filming.
Packham said he had received two threats in the past month alone, adding he had reported the most recent threats to the police. He added: “We have had several threats recently that are not death threats but they’re saying: ‘We’re going to harm you and your family.’
“And they come, unbelievably, from emails. We’ve got the person’s email address. Obviously, I’ve reported them to the police. I haven’t heard back from the police but they have acknowledged receipt of them.”
In 2011, Packham said arsonists set fire to a car and burned down the gate to his property, in view of his CCTV cameras. The culprits have not been caught. In 2022, Hampshire constabulary reissued a fresh appeal for information.
Speaking about the arson attack, he said: “They know who these people are – ish. They don’t know precisely which person it is but they said that, you know, sometimes these things play out over a couple of years, because eventually they might fall out with one another, and then they will grass one another up. They are career criminals.
“The police described them as career criminals and on that account, they were probably paid to do the job. And they didn’t come from anywhere around here. They came from somewhere quite far off.”
In 2019, Packham revealed he and his family received death threats days after dead crows were strung up outside his home after a row about shooting birds.
Last year, he told a court in a libel trial that he often wondered if “today is the day that a psychopath fuelled by all this hate turns up and kills me”. The trial was a result of a magazine that published false claims Packham had defrauded and “manipulated” people into donating to a charity to rescue tigers, while knowing the animals were well looked after. He was awarded £90,000 in damages.
