Chris Packham has revealed some of Springwatch viewers’ most common complaints ahead of the show’s 18th season.
The presenter, who has hosted Springwatch since 2009, will be entering his 13th season of the BBC Two nature show with Michaela Strachan, his stepdaughter Megan McCubbin and Iolo Williams fronting the programme alongside him.
When asked whether he receives abuse online, Chris Packham told RadioTimes.com and other press: “We get very little abuse as a direct result of the programme.
“When we get things wrong actually, we take a vicarious pleasure in putting our hands up and saying, ‘We got that wrong. We were told by such and such…’ We don’t like to be the sort of lecturing experts, we’d like to be part of a conversation with our audience.
“So again, you know, as long as they’re polite about it, and they invariably are, but we do occasionally make mistakes, it’s actually good, it keeps us on our toes, we don’t pretend to be perfect. And we’re always willing to acknowledge other people’s expertise in advance of our own.”
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He added that one of the biggest complaints he receives from viewers is about his pronunciation of place names.
“There is one other thing I should have noted for the programme and that is our often dreadful mispronunciation of Scottish, Welsh and Irish districts but we do our best,” he said. “Michaela tries a lot harder than I do, and of course we’ve got Iolo there and he always gets them right. So you know, at least one member of the team has the correct vernacular to satisfy the UK audience.”
McCubbin added: “The reaction that I always get from Springwatch is one which is overwhelmingly positive and the audience have been so welcoming and so lovely and so kind to me joining the show.”
Pointing out that she occasionally pronounces words incorrectly due to her dyslexia, she added: “Irish names for me is what it was last series, when I pronounced a few Irish towns wrong. But I’m dyslexic so sometimes I struggle pronouncing words that I say all the time.
“And I’ll just randomly say them wrong, especially if words starts with the same letter and I confuse them. So it’s always a kind of a learning process and obviously, you want to do people’s names and the towns justice and things like that. So yeah, always conscious to do the very, very best we can.”
Springwatch begins on Monday 30th May at 8pm on BBC Two. Looking for something else to watch? Visit our TV Guide. Also visit our hub for more Entertainment news.