Celebrity
Best known for Winterwatch and Springwatch, wildlife presenter Michaela Strachan on family, grief and what keeps her going
For 13 years Michaela Strachan has been the bubbly presenter of Springwatch and Winterwatch, bringing her unfailing optimism to the long-running wildlife series.
But smiling has been a struggle for Michaela over the past year. She admits she has been brought low by the deaths of numerous loved ones, most recently the death of her partner Nick Chevallier’s mother Patricia, who died aged 96 early last month.
In the new BBC2 series Pilgrimage, in which celebrities of different faiths (and no faith) go on a two-week spiritual journey through north Wales, Michaela – who says the natural world is her religion – became highly emotional on camera as she recalled all the people she’d lost recently.
Today, we’re meeting over Zoom from her home in Cape Town, South Africa, where Michaela lives with Nick, her partner of 21 years, who’s a director and cameraman, and their son, Oliver, 18. She also has three adult stepchildren from Nick’s previous marriage.
‘Just before I did Pilgrimage my best friend died,’ says Michaela, 57, speaking of TV producer Lucy Bowden, whom Michaela had met on The Really Wild Show and who had become the series editor of Springwatch and Winterwatch.
The two women were already friends before bonding over a devastating illness. ‘She had the same cancer diagnosis as I did years ago,’ continues Michaela, who in 2014 had a double mastectomy and reconstructive surgery after being diagnosed with breast cancer.
‘I was diagnosed first with breast cancer, then a couple of years later she was diagnosed. And of course, I was the first friend she phoned, because I’d been through it, and I was like, “Lucy, you’re going to be fine. You have the same diagnosis as me; you’ve caught it early, they’re going to take it out, you’re going to be fine.”
‘And she was fine, but then a couple of years later it came back and it hit her hard. She lived on chemo for the last year and a half of her life. And I walked that journey with her, and I helped her and was very close to her during that time. I was with her just before she died.’
Unfortunately, Lucy and Patricia’s deaths are only part of the story for Michaela: last year she also lost Nick’s sister to cancer, one of his best friends died from a heart attack, and one of Michaela’s best friends lost her 35-year-old son.
‘So as you watch the grief of everybody around that, it obviously affects you hugely,’ says Michaela. ‘I remember phoning somebody after my best fri
