'I'd Love To Do Strictly... But I Haven't Been Asked!'

Wildlife presenter Michaela Strachan opens up about her unfulfilled ambitions and how, following her battle with breast cancer, she’s kept her sense of humour – naming her new breasts after a cocktail…

It’s something that most of us wouldn’t ever discover. Michaela Strachan is allergic to elephants. ‘I was filming in Swaziland with Chris Packham,’ she says. ‘And I came out in a rash all over my upper body. I was also sneezing quite a lot. But by the time I saw a doctor, the symptoms had disappeared.

‘A little while later, I was filming in a zoo and, as soon as I got close to the elephants, I started sneezing again. Then I recorded Elephant Diaries for the BBC, which meant being with orphaned elephants all day, their trunks and saliva all over me. My eyelids swelled up, I could hardly breathe, I was covered in a rash. It felt like I had flu, although when I took an antihistamine tablet, everything calmed down.’

It’s a problem, you might say, that comes with the territory. After lending harassed parents a very welcome helping hand by fronting TV’s Wide Awake Club on Saturday mornings, Michaela became one of the presenters on Countryfile in 1999 before graduating to Autumnwatch in 2011. She’s about to return to BBC2 with Winterwatch at the end of this month.

Until Gillian Burke joined the team, Michaela was the only female presenter alongside Chris Packham and Martin Hughes-Games. So where does she stand on the gender-pay topic? A cloud passes over her face. ‘The truth is that I don’t want to know what anybody else earns.