Bill Oddie: The lesser-spotted wildlife expert
This article was first published in Radio Times magazine in August 2013, to promote the BBC programme Britain’s Big Wildlife Revival. Add Britain’s Big Wildlife Revival to your watchlist Bill Oddie arrives for our interview in his hand, he is carrying a dog-eared greetings card that, when opened, plays a startlingly lifelike recording of a puffin’s call – a sound that is half-donkey, half-chicken. Oddie chuckles as he flaps the card open and closed. “A puffin is classically, you would have to say, a bird which non-bird-watchers still enjoy,” he says, placing both the toy and the card on a low coffee table in the back room of his large house in Hampstead, north London. The window overlooks a fairytale garden overrun with bushes and grass and artistic installations involving mirrors and bits of string. Inside, the walls and tables are strewn with knick-knacks – tribal masks, ashtrays in the shape of cannabis leaves and a couple of electric guitars propped up in one corner. The puffin blends in seamlessly. Oddie is about to return …
