From the Daily Telegraph:
BBC presenter Chris Packham has been criticised after urging people who bank with Barclays to stick their heads in a bucket of petrol and set themselves on fire… He said: “But, if anyone here is banking with Barclays, then, I suggest you stick your head in a bucket of fuel and set fire to it because you’re burning our planet down. And, it’s time to put this stuff behind us.”
A complaint about Packham’s comments was also made to Derbyshire Constabulary.
The complainant, a country sports enthusiast who wishes to remain anonymous, wrote to officers asking how the BBC presenter’s comments could be legal “given the recent spate of civil unrest which we have seen across the country” and those “inciting people to take direct action.”
A police spokesman said: “The video has been reviewed and no offences have been committed.
“Each incident that takes place is reviewed based on the language used as well as the specific set of circumstances in which the comments are made.
“In this instance, while there is legislation covering individuals encouraging or assisting a person or persons to cause serious harm to themselves, there is no suggestion that this is a serious attempt to influence anyone to commit any such acts.”
This preposterous non-story, bylined to Simon Trump and Steve Bird, is just the latest installment in an ongoing series of lame attack articles aimed at Packham, in each case bolstered by a convenient anonymous accuser.
Back in April 2023, the same duo reported on speculation that a vehicle working on Packham’s Springwatch programme may have been responsible for running over a badger nicknamed Bernie in Suffolk… in 2015. How did this become “news” eight years later?
The mystery surrounding the badger’s death only came to light after a keen naturalist recently posted a message on social media asking whether the BBC would ever reveal what happened to Bernie.
Details of where to find the message were not provided. This was followed by another item in August:
When Chris Packham appeared on The One Show with three goshawk chicks, the naturalist took great pride in showing how a bird of prey once near extinction in Britain is at last thriving.
But, that BBC recording is now at the centre of a police investigation over whether a wildlife crime – including the somewhat unusual practice of bird sniffing – was committed before the nation’s very eyes.
The clip, broadcast in June following a morning of filming, prompted a complaint to police that a filming licence may not have been obtained.
…The man who complained – a shooting enthusiast who does not want to be named for fear of reprisals – said: “I watched the programme and was struck by the way Mr Packham was handling and sniffing the birds. These birds are Schedule 1 protected and it is a crime to ‘intentionally or recklessly disturb at, on or near an active nest’.”
The matter was dropped in October:
Hampshire Police has written to the man who complained – an amateur shooting enthusiast who does not want to be named – to say that no charges will be brought and the case has now been closed.
It is tempting to suspect that the “country sports enthusiast”, the “keen naturalist” and the “amateur shooting enthusiast” are all the same person – or if not, that there is some coordinating intelligence behind them. Does this individual really “fear reprisals”, or is it rather that the two hacks for some reason would rather obfuscate who it is they are repeatedly relying on for their stream of easy copy?
As well as the above, in 2022 the paper also published a more serious story about Packham – this time, it was written up by the paper’s crime correspondent Martin Evans, but as with the more recent examples an unnamed individual was at the heart of it:
A mystery businessman has offered a £50,000 reward to help capture a gang who carried out a terrifying arson attack at the home of the BBC TV nature presenter Chris Packham.
Suspicion immediately fell on pro-hunting supporters who were thought to be targeting Mr Packham because of his vocal opposition to bloodsports.
But there was also fevered speculation online that the attack might actually be the work of animal rights activists who were trying to set up and discredit their opponents.
…The mystery benefactor, who claims he is not a hunting, shooting or fishing enthusiast, has appealed on a website to a number of potential parties, which he believes could help.
The website was being sued by Packham for libel (mentioned by Evans in passing), and there is no evidence that Evans did anything to verify the existence of this “mystery businessman” for himself. In his witness statement, Packham detected bad faith (para 179):
The clear message from these articles is that in addition to writing myself a death threat letter, I also fabricated the arson attack in order to, presumably, elicit further publicity and/or public sympathy. I understand that the final date for the reward to be claimed is 2 May 2023 which is the first day of listing for trial in this litigation, making a mockery of the idea that the reward is not associated with my defamation claim.
Packham’s advice to Barclay’s customers was captured by a website called Fieldsports TV, which had settled a separate libel action last November.
UPDATE (October):
On 5 October 2024, Trump and Bird produced yet another story about Packham:
Chris Packham has been forced to pay £200,000 to a pensioner and country sportsman he was accused of pursuing “vindictively” through the courts, it has been claimed.
In 2023, the naturalist and BBC presenter was awarded £90,000 in damages after the High Court upheld his defamation claims against two contributors to Country Squire, an online magazine that wrongly accused him of misleading people into donating to a tiger rescue charity.
But his case against Paul Read, a 70-year-old grandfather who was the proofreader for some of the magazine articles, was thrown out by the High Court judge.
It meant Packham, 63, became liable for the pensioner’s legal costs, and Mr Read has now claimed his damages have been dwarfed by that bill.
It is understood the Springwatch presenter had to pay £196,008, more than double the £90,000 he was awarded as damages.
Read was actually billed on the website (previously discussed here) as a “co-author” of the articles, a designation he was happy to accept until the libel action was launched. However, given that Trump and Bird go on to quote Read, why is the costs figure only “understood” to be £196,008? This implies some intermediary. The article does not explain why this is news now, 18 months after the court case.
Ten days later the same detail appeared in the Daily Mail, in a short piece by the paper’s gossip columnist Richard Eden that also contains further claims:
He [Packham] has, it emerged, sustained a grievous blow in his latest High Court battle, after which he was accused of ‘vindictively’ pursuing a 70-year-old grandfather through the courts – and was landed with a legal bill for £196,008.
But that, it seems, does not mark the end of Chris Packham’s current woes.
I can reveal that the BBC presenter has just suffered the publication in America of a marmalade-dropper of a book which has been privately published but is financed in part – so its publisher claims – by some of Packham’s BBC colleagues, with elements of research apparently supplied by High Court staff… it pulls no punches, even alleging that Packham, 63, is ‘narcissistic’ and a ‘manipulator’.
That “He” in the first sentence starts the article, which implies some botched late editing. As for the book, Eden neglects to provide its title, its author or the name of the publisher. It seems poor form to publish vicious allegations against Packham’s character – “narcissistic” and “manipulator” – that are unattributed and unexplained.
The book in fact is called The Fall of Packham, and an image of the cover was posted online by Andrew Gilruth of the Moorland Association on 8 October. No publisher is apparent, although the author is supposedly one “James Johnson”. It doesn’t seem to be for sale anywhere, and there’s no ISBN number. However, copies have been circulating privately: Jeremy Clarkson brandished a copy in an Instagram video that was noticed by the Express on 24 October (Clarkson miread the title, referring to it as the “The Fall of Chris Packham“), while celebrity farmer Gareth Wyn Jones showed off his one the next day. Several apparent references to the title of the work have also been made on Twitter/X by a law professor named Andrew Tettenborn, in undignified goading replies to Packham’s own posts (here and here).
Clearly, then, the book is being disseminated by someone with a grudge, and it provided a bit of easy work for Eden at the Mail. So why did Trump and Bird at the Telegraph ignore it? It seems unlikely that they wouldn’t have received a copy as well, and its appearance is the only news hook on which to hang Read’s award so many months after the case. Perhaps they don’t believe everything anti-Packham that comes their way.
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