Chris Packham welcomed his stepdaughter, Megan McCubbin, onto Springwatch and Autumnwatch as one of the show's new guest presenters back in 2020. However, the TV personality admitted that he would have been "horrified" if her ambition was to be a TV presenter while growing up.
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Speaking to The Guardian, he explained: "Megs knows that TV is not the be-all-and-end-all. It’s not about saving lives, it’s about trying to share a passion, entertain and inform people.
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"You’ve got to have other interests. If Megs had said to me when she was 12, ‘I want to be a TV presenter’, I would’ve been horrified, because it’s one of those things you’re better off drifting into. Then it’s not about your ego, it’s about your purpose."
The pair have been living at Chris's house since the first lockdown as Megan's mother Jo is a nurse and felt it would be safer for Megan to live there. While there, they established the Self-Isolating Bird Club, a daily, 30-minute broadcast live-streamed from their garden on Facebook which caught the attention of Springwatch producers who suggested she join the show as a guest presenter.
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Speaking about the opportunity, she told HELLO!: "I was slightly nervous, but I met Chris when I was two years old so have always grown up around film crews.
Megan chatted about joining her stepdad on the show
"I was with my stepdad, and who better to learn from than him? He's a role model of mine professionally and it's great that he happens to be my stepdad as well."
Chris said of Megan's Springwatch debut: "She did really well. I said to her: 'You figure out what you want to say and I'll fill in around you.' I don't need to own anything, I've got nothing to prove. I was there as a support mechanism, really, and wasn't needed."
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