Never has a man loved slugs as much as television presenter Chis Packham loves lugs, as the 63-year-old joins the Daily Star’s campaign calling for British people to ‘hug-a-slug’
Chris Packham is on a mission to get Britain to celebrate its “bloody amazing” slugs. The TV god, 63, praised the “enormously interesting” slimesters as he backed the Daily Star’s hug-a-slug campaign.
He said they play a “fundamentally important role in ecology”, along with snails. The Springwatch presenter spoke out after their numbers soared last year due to the “perfect conditions” of mild temperatures and endless rain.
It led 2024 to called the “year of the slug” by the charity Garden Organic as there were so many of them destroying gardeners’ crops. But the telly star said: “I love slugs. Slugs are really important. Things are getting wetter, we’ve had lots of wet springs, wet summers. So they’re doing really well at the moment.”
He warned that killing them means households risk losing the chance of hearing song thrushes in their gardens, which is “extraordinarily brilliant”.
The gastropods also form a “key part” of the diets of hedgehogs, slow worms, and other animals. Leopard slugs mating is “the best sex show on earth” as it’s so “astonishing”, he added.
He also praised tree slugs, which reach all the way to the highest branches at night to feed on algae before going “all the way back down again”. “Slugs are enormously interesting,” he said. “Slugs are bloody amazing.”
His staunch defence of the mighty molluscs contrasts with TV gardener Alan Titchmarsh, 75, who has branded the hug-a-slug crusade “unrealistic”.
But The Royal Horticultural Society has recommended “turning a blind eye” to their misdeeds and focusing on the positives slugs bring to gardens instead.
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Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
