Cartoon capers or real life?

People have no idea what they give away about themselves.

In a recent post (It’s a wonderful world?) I described the “CGI life” of a guest on BBCs Desert Island Discs, the CEO of a major airline. She appeared to give little away — her life was too “CGI”, too perfect, too “wonderful” — but that in itself was telling. In contrast, however, this week’s guest, Chris Packham (tv presenter and wildlife expert) did not present us with a CGI life. His life was not perfect, it was not “wonderful”, it was messy. In other words, his life was REAL.

(If you want a demonstration of the difference between a “CGI” life and a real life, listen to those 2 programmes.)

Either way, however, whether or not they have the cunning to hide behind a biographical façade, guests on such shows unwittingly reveal much about themselves and their character.

Packham is as much of a “type” as the CEO. My assessment of Packham’s character is that he is “royalty” — which is, in fact, a very common character type (and many readers will fall into that category).

Typical “royalty” character traits were highlighted by Packham. For example, he stated that people had to earn his respect. This is a common enough attitude among people — and it is extremely arrogant. What it means is that people such as Packham regard themselves as setting the standards of behaviour etc, etc. It is they who decides who is or is not worthy of respect. They do not “meet” people “half way” or any nonsense like that. They are the sort of people who, when they travel abroad, do not adapt to the culture they find themselves in. Like the majority of the tourists I met in Thailand, for example, they refused to eat Thai food but ate fish and chips instead whenever they got the option. They behaved as if they were in their own country and had no interest in interacting with, in learning about, the Thais, or in exploring the Thai culture. That is a typical trait of “royalty”. It is a behaviour which isolates such a person from other people, from the rest of the world………

………thus, when Packham suggested that he became isolated from his schoolfriends because they did not share his (obsessive) interest in wildlife, it would have been a direct consequence of his standoffish-ness, his refusal, or more likely his inability, to socialize.

Packham did not talk much about his parents, but one might suppose they were also socially inept, and so, not being set a good example, Packham was not able to learn social skills from them. One clue here was that Packham’s father helped him memorise screeds and screeds of facts from encyclopedias. Geez!!! Packham’s parents encouraged his obsessive interest in wildlife. But his interest was more in the dead than the living. A favourite pastime was to collect roadkill and study the dead remains. A healthy person does not do that. A healthy person is interested in live animals, in interacting with them, in playing with them, not in studying their carcasses! So Packham’s lack of social skills was evident right from the start. Even his obsession with acquiring and training a hawk — the “sport of kings” — was not about learning about animals but more of a status symbol, picking him out as being special in some way.

When I heard Packham describing his life and his interests, my impression was that the man is probably autistic. His obsessive behaviour when young as well as when an adult — he has been diagnosed as being “mildly” Obsessive-Compulsive — his social isolation, are big giveaways. And, in fact, when I first saw Packham on TV (Spring Watch?), his behaviour, his bad eye-contact for example, were glaringly obvious pointers to some sort of problem. His Desert Island Discs interview confirmed those suspicions.