Chris Packham, doyenne of British wildlife, animal lover, Springwatch presenter, conservationist and environmentalist, is passionate about the things he loves.

But those of you who've watched him in action extolling the virtues of the great white shark or highlighting the the endangered Maltese dovetail, will know that his patience rarely extends to Homo sapiens.

The 54 year-old TV presenter lives in the New Forest on a private estate with his two dogs Itchy and Scratchy. His partner Charlotte Corney runs the Isle Of White Zoo and he is very close to her daughter, but they don't live together.

"I like living in the woodland. It's my home environment really and I feel really comfortable there. Most human beings like being in open spaces, but I like being inside something, letting it engulf you because it's always changing, the buds are opening, the colours change so quickly. I've been in London for three days and I come back and it looks totally different."

And yet despite preferring this solitary existence, Chris is launching his memoirs Fingers in the Sparkle Jar, which he has written himself, in a no-holds-barred account of his battles with depression, suicidal thoughts and Aspergers.

So why put himself through this, why reveal all, why not stay in Scotland tracking the golden eagle or watching otters on the riverside, why tell us, the mammals he most distrusts, with the private life he has always guarded so tightly?

"Because I wanted to make something out of words. I'm a zoologist who got a C in English in 1976, but I wanted to make something out of words, so I read and read, and wrote and wrote, and finally crafted something I'm happy with, about life and death. So I'm not embarrassed about its content in any shape or form. I just wanted it to be a good read and hope people will enjoy reading it. I also hope my book might get a message out to young people that Asperger's is not a disability."

So does he mind what people think? "I'm quite robust. I get a huge amount of negative messages and flak, hate tweets, because of my campaigns, but I know my arguments are scientifically based and not emotional opinions and when in a corner it's a human reaction to lash out, so I understand. I don't enjoy it but I don't let it get to me."

But then Chris Packham has long since learnt to control his emotions, to allow him to exist in the human world he once shrank from and enable him to pursue the career he loved.

Because Chris' Aspergers lay undiagnosed for years and it crippled him socially, his teens in particular being a particularly painful time, angry at being so different to his peers, unable to fit in, socially inept. "I felt anger, resentment and envy. I blamed myself for a long time for being different.

"But then in the 60s and 70s Asperger's wasn't recognised. Even now there are people who don't want to talk about it. It does mean however, that I have an intense memory and systematic processing which is an advantage "

Growing up in Southampton, his family were extremely tolerant of this nature obsessed boy, who collected animals like stamps, their two-up-two down house bursting with his menagerie of reptiles and pets. His obsession with bats, badgers and kestrels in particular were extreme.

"I remember walking with my sister in the park when I had just gone for the Really Wild Show TV presenting job, and she said 'Thank God, now you can talk about wildlife to someone else'. Because I bored my family in intense detail for years at every meal time. They were very tolerant."

He managed to get into Southampton University to study zoology though despite his mental health problems: "Southampton really looked after me, even when I was too ill to go in, so I am indebted to them for that."

After that, the dream was to study birds and he applied to do a PHD at Oxford University: "I had a very unfortunate meeting with a man at Oxford who interviewed me. He was extremely mean and desperately unkind and I was very upset about it at the time

because it's all I wanted to do, blue sky science.

"I think he judged me purely on my spiky hair and leather jacket and not about my kestrel knowledge," Chris decides.

Their loss surely? Instead he started his PHD at Southampton before jacking it in early. "It just wasn't realistic - expecting to lock myself away in a wood, study birds and be paid for it was nonsense. It was never going to happen so I'd did something else. But it haunted me for years afterwards, that I hadn't finished my education."

That something else was The Really Wild Show, progressing to Wild Shots on Channel 4, BBC series The X Creatures, Two's Hands on Nature, Nature's Calendar, Inside Out, numerous documentaries and his own production company, and since June 2009 co-presenting Springwatch, Autumnwatch and Winterwatch - along with Michaela Strachan and Martin Hughes-Games.

And yet it nearly didn't happen at all. Working first behind the camera and then in front Chris remembers: "When I started I couldn't even look people in the eye or join in, I just looked at my shoes."

Sitting in his hotel room with the Really Wild Show crew in Bristol he realised that if he didn't tackle his fears head on, he wouldn't last long in his newly founded career.

"I sat on my bed in my pants and gave myself a good talking to. That was the crunch. I was 26 and knew it wasn't going to work, that they would get fed up with me, that I needed to make a success of it and I really wrung it out that night. I realised I needed to get into a zone where I could manage these social differences."

He has been managing them ever since: "I still find myself going off on one and I'll look up and find everyone staring at me in alarm and know that for some reason the brakes didn't go on. But managing that can be quite exhausting, and still is."

Luckily the camera was an instant ally rather than an enemy: "When I'm in front of the camera, the world ceases to exist," he says simply. "And it's an enormous privilege to venture out into the natural world and meet and see so many amazing things." As for coming to Oxford University's Museum Of Natural History to launch his new book, Chris is delighted because it's one of his favourite places on earth.

"It's what museums should be like; full of articulated skeletons, specimens and cabinets. It's a joy. So I'm going to get there two hours early and have a good look around first. I love it there. Have you been up the tower and seen the swifts nesting? I'm a great fan."

But will he be worried about all those people? "I don't get nervous but then neither do I expect people to like me. And it's not like I'm really famous - some people can't walk down the street without being mobbed. That would be horrendous."

And yet the wildlife genre is still growing in popularity, so presumably is his fame. "I'm not surprised and I don't say that with any sense of arrogance or conceit. On Springwatch we allow people to see the wildlife around them in a way they might not otherwise and in new and novel ways. We show them the wildlife on their doorsteps and feature things that people care about, and that's the key to our success." And Chris of course.

Chris Packham is in conversation with Hugh Warwick to launch Fingers in the Sparkle Jar (Ebury Press, £20) at Oxford University Museum of Natural History on May 7 at 5.30pm, hosted by Waterstones Oxford.