Michaela Strachan reveals her 'heated' off-screen rows with Springwatch co-host Chris Packham leave their colleagues 'wide-eyed'

Their on-screen chemistry has been central to the 20-year success of Springwatch, which returns to the BBC next week.

But now Michaela Strachan, 60, has revealed that her relationship with co-presenter Chris Packham, 65, has been fractious at times.

'We have heated debates because Chris is the scientific one and I am the soft underbelly of wildlife telly,' she says.

'We had this heated row, and it made me laugh because there were all these young researchers who were sitting there with their eyes getting wider, thinking, "I thought these two were friends and now they're really fighting each other"'. 

Strachan, a Springwatch presenter since 2011, recently revealed a second cancer scare, 12 years after her devastating breast cancer battle.

The BBC presenter was originally diagnosed with breast cancer in 2014 after competing in Tom Daley's ITV diving show Splash!

Strachan received the diagnosis following a routine mammogram in Cape Town and eventually underwent a double mastectomy as part of her treatment.

Appearing on Kaye Adams' How To Be 60 podcast in February, the presenter said that she had a second health scare after viewers spotted a lump on her throat during a live broadcast. 

'I did have a second scare, which was extraordinary, because I was doing Springwatch and I had a few people after the show message me and say, did you know you've got a lump on your throat?'

'I was like, "have I?" I was watching the show back in bed - because I'm slightly geeky like that, I've always watched the live show back - and I thought, "oh my God, I do - I've got a lump."' 

She added: 'It was like an Adam's apple at the side of my throat that was moving up and down as I spoke.

'I mentioned it to the production team. I said, "I don't expect there's any chance of seeing a doctor?" We were up in the Cairngorms [in Scotland] at the time.

'They managed to get a doctor in and I explained that I'd had breast cancer. They said, "With that history, we need to get you seen".'

The discovery led to an urgent blood test at a local hospital and a weekend appointment with a throat cancer specialist in Harley Street.

But what made the situation particularly distressing was that she felt she couldn't talk about it beyond her closest circle as the scare happened in 2019 when fellow TV presenter Nicki Chapman had just been diagnosed with a brain tumour.

'Everyone was talking about Nicki,' she said. 'I can't say, "by the way, I just found a lump on my throat, it could be cancer!" So the whole thing was just awful.'

The star, who lives in South Africa with her film director partner Nick Chevallier - the father of her son Oliver, 20 - faced her fears head-on during the specialist appointment.

She recalled: 'I said, "give me the worst case scenario" and he said, "I don't want to do that". I said, "Well, I'm asking you. Could it be cancer?"

Fortunately, tests revealed the lump was indeed a benign cyst which doctors were able to drain without any complications, and Michaela has since recovered.

'I still don't quite understand what it means,' she said. 'That's the one that's slightly more likely to spread to the other breasts.'

Doctors gave her the choice of having one or both breasts removed, but after consulting a friend who'd had the same type of cancer, she opted for a double mastectomy.

'She said to me, "get them both off",' Strachan recalled. 'She said, "you don't want to be looking at that other one and always wondering whether it's going to come back into that breast".'

Her friend also warned her about the psychological impact, telling her: 'If you have the double, they're just then the same and you don't end up looking at the one still there thinking, I wish I still had my normal boob on the other side.'