WHEN people are regularly on our screens we often feel we have a relationship with them. And, just as irrationally, we form opinions about their private personalities.

Even so, when I mentioned to various folk that one of the chairing sessions I was down for at the Edinburgh International Book Festival was Chris Packham, I was amazed at the very specific emotions he seemed to engender.

His current programmes, “Springwatch” and “Autumnwatch” have a devoted following, not least because of the fabulously intimate photography of all kinds of bird and animal wildlife the series cover.

Yet as a presenter he seems to provoke some very divided opinions – some people spontaneously telling me how annoying they found him despite his obvious knowledge and passion.

That wouldn’t come as surprise to this complex man who has spent a lot of his life “on the outside”. A relentless collector of live and dead species as a child – variously obsessing over otters, bats, dinosaurs, badgers, foxes and his beloved pet Kestrel – he was bullied at school for being “different” .

His long-suffering parents and sister were treated to detailed mealtime lectures on various aspects of his current menagerie, and his classmates didn’t want to know.

University brought little respite from this social isolation outside of his perhaps unexpected flirtation with punk rock.

And it wasn’t until early adulthood that, with the help of a then girlfriend, he self-diagnosed Aspergers.

He talked movingly and rankly about all that at his book festival session; a 600-strong audience hanging on to every word of his rapid fire response to questions.

With his permission, I was able to explore the dark times which led him into an unsuccessful suicide bid, many suicidal thoughts, and ultimately time with a therapist who helped him unpick all the inner pain from the years of being misunderstood and not accepted.

Nobody who heard him could for a moment doubt his acute intelligence, or his ability to recount some of the most painful episodes in his life with a searing honesty.

People like him, he told his audience, could neither tell lies nor cope with being lied to.

People like him had to work hard at having natural relationships both in their private and professional lives since making normal eye contact and reacting to everyday social prompts don’t come naturally.

I left that event with a huge respect for Packham the man as well as the naturalist and conservationist, but also with a new respect for and understanding of the mountains people on any branch of the autistic spectrum have to climb in order to deal with what the rest of us can regard as everyday occurrences rather than fresh and alarming challenges.

Recently Sir Ian Botham attempted to get him fired from the BBC because of Packham’s outspoken opposition to driven grouse moors and his insistence that raptors like hen harriers and Golden Eagles were being trapped, shot, or poisoned. Personally I think the BBC are very lucky to have him. As are we.

*His memoir is “Fingers in The Sparkle Jar” from Ebury Press.