Michaela Strachan: ‘It’s sad we’re raping the ocean for marine collagen. We should embrace ageing’

Miichaela Strachan was born in Ewell, Surrey, in April 1959. She has been a TV presenter since 1986, working on shows including The Wide Awake Club, The Hitman And Her,The Really Wild Show, Countryfile, Springwatch and many many more. She started off presenting children’s programmes but these days is known as a wildlife presenter and has travelled all over the world filming animals and conservation projects.

In her Letter to My Younger Self, Strachan looks back at early troubles, her TV presenting career and her relationship with ageing.

At 16, I wanted to be in musical theatre. Up until the age of 16, I was very into dance and drama and singing, and so I left school at 16 with nine O levels and went to musical theatre college. Margot Fonteyn the ballerina was an absolute hero of mine. And I think I was probably obsessed with the musical Cats. I wasn’t into pop music as much as I was into musicals, that’s for sure. 

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My parents used to have quite big parties every so often. It was very ’70s to have a bar in your lounge where you hung the wine glasses up above. There would be decanters on the back and there’d be stools in front. My dad used to stand behind the bar and serve drinks to friends. My dad used to call me his little princess. Dad was much quieter than my mum – you never really got to know my dad’s past. My partner now, he’s always telling stories to his kids about when he was little and where he grew up. My dad didn’t really do that. He was more of an introvert. 

I don’t think I was particularly knowledgeable about world affairs at 16. I was pretty naive. I worked hard at school and I was very diligent. Now, [co-presenter] Chris Packham often calls me Hermione, because, you know, I’m like Hermione [Granger, from Harry Potter]: I’m a goody two-shoes – I do my homework and I make sure I’m prepared and on time. I don’t think I’ve changed much since I was 16. 

There’s no way I would have predicted my path. I mean, who would have thought after I did musical theatre that I would move into children’s presenting with the Wide Awake Club and The Really Wild Show, then I would present a late-night music show with Pete Waterman called The Hitman and Her? It’s been an incredibly interesting, varied career that’s got me to where I am now, at 60 years old. 

When I was in musical theatre college, I suffered from anorexia. My family life sort of fell apart when I was 16. I don’t tend to talk about it very much publicly, but it did. It fell apart. And I was somebody that liked control in my life. I liked things to be ordered. I’ve got that sort of personality. So, you know, when things went out of control I did the classic anorexia thing, which is, I controlled myself. And the fact is that I was looking in a mirror every day, in a leotard and tights. It was absolute textbook anorexia. 

I went on tour with Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and got very thin. When I came home, my brother was absolutely horrified at the way I looked. He got really upset with me. We had an argument and he just said, right, you’ve got two choices in life. You either decide to get better and you live or you continue to starve yourself and you die. He said, I really hope you choose the first one. It was a simple, punchy, powerful thing to say. And I went to bed that night thinking, What the hell have I been doing? Why am I doing this? Why am I going through this? For somebody who actually was quite a sensible person, it was quite a shock that I treated my body like that. And that night, I went to bed and I thought, I don’t want to be like this any more. I want to get healthy again.  

Read more:

• Chris Packham: ‘My younger self would be my biggest critic’
• The comeback kids: The 5 ‘lost’ wildlife species returning from extinction to the UK
• The new Big 5 project shoots wildlife ‘with a camera, not a gun’

When I met Chris Packham, I thought he was going to hate me. Because he was this blond, spiky-haired, punky, edgy bloke that liked The Clash. I was this bubbly, over enthusiastic presenter that liked Kylie Minogue. You wouldn’t think that would marry well. So we are an unlikely double act. Yet we hit it off really quickly and we’ve got an incredible respect for each other. We make each other laugh most of the time. It’s an incredibly easy relationship between Chris and me. And I’ve learned a lot about autism, and about his particular autism, by reading his book. So sometimes I do have to put myself into his autistic brain to understand why he’s saying a certain thing. 

I think I was at my happiest on The Really Wild Show. It was pivotal for me with my career. Before that, I’d done a lot of children’s programmes and wacky stuff that didn’t have quite such a serious message in it. I did 14 years of The Really Wild Show. I was the longest-running presenter on it and I travelled all over the world. I mean, what a privilege to be paid to go all over the world. I saw the most incredible wildlife and also met the most amazing people, who had given their lives up to be in conservation or to be environmentalists or to really push sustainability. It was an absolutely incredible programme to be part of. And what I loved about it was, when I got a little older, they let me do more mature things. So I ended up being the issue presenter. I would look at the state of the South China Sea or I would do a special on shark finning. It was amazing that they let me grow with the show. 

I don’t see negatives about getting older. I think how privileged you are if you do get older. Having been diagnosed with cancer, I think that changes your perspective. I look at every year as a bonus. Things could have gone very differently. I feel so incredibly lucky to have found my cancer early, and the only thing it left me with was the set of fake boobs. Something that really, really helped me get over my scars of having a double mastectomy is a thing called kintsugi. It’s the Japanese art of mending a bowl. It means that something that is broken can look even more beautiful than it was before, become something totally unique and something that shows resilience, because it’s survived being broken. That really helped me with my breast cancer. Because I thought, yes, I am scarred, my boobs do look very different, they don’t look ‘normal’ – but they’re mine. And they’re unique. And they tell my story. 

I think it is incredibly sad that we spend our lives trying to look younger all the time. And, you know, I’m part of that. I’m not saying I’m above it. I don’t want loads of lines on my face. But isn’t it sad that we’re now raping the ocean for marine collagen? I mean, come on. It’s so absurd. What a shame that we can’t really embrace our lines and the way we get older. I’m not sure if I’m entirely ready to completely embrace it, but I wish I was. I wish I could completely embrace that and say, I don’t care that I’ve got lines. I don’t care that I’m a bit jowly. 

If I could have one last conversation with anyone, it would be my friend Lucy. Lucy died of breast cancer a couple of years ago, and she was one of my best friends. She had a very similar breast cancer to myself. Her diagnosis was good, it was caught early, she had a single mastectomy and was good to go. But then it came back and now she’s no longer with us. When I was doing Dancing on Ice, in particular, I really missed the conversations that I could have had with her. She loved anything that was glamorous, like Dancing on Ice. You know, she would have known all the celebs on it, we would have gossiped away. So that’s who I really, really miss.  

If I could relive any time in my life, it would be the first year of doing the Wide Awake Club. I was 20 years old. I was completely naive. Nobody cared about what was happening on the other channels. No one cared about viewing figures. I wasn’t involved in any of the politics of television because I was 20. Suddenly people would recognise you in the street. I was using all the skills that I had – we did a lot of sketches on the show where we’d sing, we’d dance, and we’d act. So I was able to still do the performing side on a really fun show with people that I got on brilliantly with and that I’m still in contact with 40 years later. That was a blast.

Michaela Strachan: Not Just A Wild Life UK Tour runs from 13-30 April

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