Chris Packham has revealed that punk rock saved him from committing suicide as a lonely teenager.
In a documentary tonight, the TV host, who has Asperger’s, tells of his adolescent anger, unhappiness and alienation.
The naturalist, 58, admits thinking he would not live beyond 21.
But he says he found solace by immersing himself in punk, which he loves to this day.
The Winterwatch presenter says of his childhood in suburban Southampton: “I was isolated, extraordinarily angry and not a very happy teenager. We now know it was the Asperger’s but nothing was known of it then.
"As I was obviously different from my peers and, they thought, a little weird, they started ostracising me.
“I was mentally in a really bad place and had started thinking about killing myself.”
Then, at about 15, he found himself when “punk exploded”.
Chris recalls: ”I dyed my hair and wore very strange clothes for a teenage boy.
"That was the first really empowering thing I did in addressing my situation. It was me taking control.”
He was in punk band Titanic Survivors as a guitarist from 1977-79.
In the show he is reunited with them in a pub after 40 years and sees them perform his song Only The Good Die Young.
It was a phrase his mum used, he says – “and I made it a suicide song, though she didn’t mean it that way”.
His sister, royal dress designer Jenny Packham, tells how she hated her “aggressive” teenage brother playing The Sex Pistols and recalls how he once shaved off her hair.
And Chris admits feeling pity for “my poor parents”.
*Chris Packham: Forever Punk, BBC4 tonight at 9:30pm.
