Chance opportunity makes Ellie face of the countryside

A few hours before I met Ellie Harrison I went online to visit her website. On there was a montage of video clips from her fledgling but already successful career in television and as the footage played out it’s not that unreasonable to say she was totally bonkers.

In the first clip she puts her hand into the sharp-toothed mouth of a crocodile.

In another she enters an enclosure of wild wolves and restrains herself as they ‘playfully’ nip at her. In the next she swims with one of the most poisonous creatures on the planet - the box jellyfish, while having a dabble at eating live termites in the jungle and getting caught up in a standoff with a herd of elephants in Africa.

She is clearly besotted by adventure and nature and I feel ready to meet a cross between Steve Irwin and David Attenborough.

Her enthusiasm is comparable, but she looks quite different. Ellie is young, blonde and bright-eyed. She left university 10 years ago with a geography degree and proceeded to ‘waft around London full of ambition but lacking in organisation’. But a brief foray making cups of tea at Channel 5 was all one director needed to see before he hired her to replace Michaela Strachan to present a children’s wildlife show.

“The director didn’t like using established talent and seemed quite happy to use the office girl, and that was me. I am so jammy,” she laughs.

She may have been lucky but she was also good, as her first series won a children’s Bafta award.

“It was a great place to cut my teeth. It was completely unscripted and we had a small budget. With wildlife you don’t get lots of takes so it was a great way to get into it,” she says. And with that the beginner, who grew up in ‘idyllic’ rural Gloucestershire, was on her way.

Opportunity

In 2006 she was given an opportunity to make wildlife films for The One Show, which she deems as a real joy. This time her job was to take Britain’s wildlife into the living room of millions of UK families as they got home from work where she cites her particular highlight as tagging and monitoring basking sharks. “I went in the water with them. You know they won’t eat you but to see a dorsal fin two metres high when you are bobbing around is something else. Really heart wrenching.”

It is these nerves-of-steel skills in front of the camera that recently attracted the attention of the BBC Countryfile director. Ellie has now joined the programme which is seeing somewhat of a renaissance of late with its prime time slot and record viewing figures. It has also reinvigorated the relationship between the media, public and farmers - a relationship that had soured some 20 years ago.

Ellie, who grew up with her father living off the land, says she now feels a big responsibility towards the farming community.

“Countryfile is so well-established we have responsibility to dispel myths and break negative headlines. The remit of Countryfile isn’t to catch people out, it is to show what’s happening in its best light and farmers do that. Farmers do the great job themselves because they are so passionate.”

She adds her love for nature is not at odds with the industry. “Historically naturalists and farmers have not been best friends but I am a realist. I know countryside isn’t about sitting in hides with binoculars. This is a managed landscape. But farmers also have a real passion for barn owls in their barn, or how clean their stream is - they are countryside people and it matters to them,” she says.

Ellie is good for farmers. She understands them and recognises their troubles in no small part due to Countryfile farmer Adam Henson. “He is so totally brilliant but if one more person tells me how much they love Adam Henson I will scream,” she jokes. “He has taught me a lot.

Public understanding

“People unwittingly point the blame at farmers thinking their first job is to look after nature. But actually it isn’t - they are businessmen and they need to make money and the buying public need to understand that. If you are only prepared to pay a little bit of money for your eggs you perhaps won’t be happy about the way they are reared.”

But her naturalist instincts take over when talk turns to ‘the badger issue’.

“If you are asking a naturalist whether we should cull badgers the answer is no. I don’t believe the science is strong enough. I believe the politics is stronger than the science. In areas where culls have taken place the incidence of TB has gone up, so until the science makes sense I am against a cull. But you are asking a naturalist - I am no farmer,” she reminds me.

Ellie is fast becoming an important part of a growing gang of young countryside ambassadors that include the likes of Jimmy Doherty and Ben Fogle who are enthusing the nation to care about the British countryside.

Attachment

“Nature is so important, it is part of us,” says Ellie. Now in her early 30s and proud mother of a nine-month old daughter, she describes what the countryside means to her: “When I see a really early morning mist in a field with trees and the sound of a crow, it just goes through me. It is an emotion rather than a vision.”

Ellie has the looks, the talent and the brains to become a household name, but she is not going to be taken in by any hype. When she is not paragliding with kites or swimming with sharks her feet are firmly on the ground. She does not Facebook or Twitter and leads a normal, albeit active life kayaking, walking, cycling and being a mother. “I am a one-day-at-a-time person trying to live a normal life. TV is so fickle. It is an amazing gig and I would love this to go on but I don’t bank on it,” she says.

But whatever happens, she is determined to determine to fulfil one ambition as she remembers her childhood roots.

“Ultimately I want to move to Gloucestershire and have a little farm myself.”

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