| “I'm
absolutely amazed by living things and I've always had-the greatest respect
for wildlife and the natural world," says the TV presenter. The strange
thing is he is speaking not in the stately whisper of Sir David Attenborough,
or even in the jolly tones of Terry Nutkins, but in the unmistakable north
London cackle of John Lydon, aka Johnny Rotten, the former Sex Pistol
and self-proclaimed "Antichrist".
Before he walked out of the I'm a Celebrity jungle earlier this year,
the ageing anarchist surprised many by declaring his love of nature, even
after having made the acquaintance of ten hungry ostriches. And now he
is back on our screens entreating us to love even the hairiest of spiders
and the most poisonous of scorpions.
So has the poster boy of punk gone - perish the thought - hippie? Has
the man who once called the Queen a "fascist" stopped being
angry and started pondering the wonder of nature and the beauty of the
universe (man)?
The trademark shock of spiky white-blond hair now has a rainbow running
through it, but we're hardly in tree-hugging territory here. Lydon is
celebrating "nature red in tooth and claw" - and. yes, he's
still angry:
"I get angry when things are done wrong or cruelly or with greed
and jealousy. They're attributes that I don't see in the wild. They're
all man-made creations. We've got complex brains, but we've clogged them
up with the wrong things. That's something a lot of naturalists are trying
to get across."
And now he has joined them In a Discovery Channel series called John Lydon's
Megabugs, he travels America to engage with some of the country's most
feared creepy crawlies.
It would be easy to dismiss it as shock TV or accuse him of cashing in
after I'm a Celebrity raised his profile and associated him with the jungle:
big bad punk scares TV viewers with big bad spiders, But it's part of
a bigger plan.
"I want to present things to children in a way they can grasp,"
he says. "Insects and spiders - they're not things to be frightened
of. Armed with just a little bit of knowledge, we can lead a happy life
and a pleasurable co-existence with them,"'
The opportunity to gurn at the camera and make googly eyes out of plastic
pots containing venomous spiders obviously appealed on one level, but
on another there is a genuine teaching zeal in Lydon and a real desire
to change our view of what's important in nature.
"Insects are the hoovers of the world," he shouts, "They
clean up. They're the maintenance brigade and we cannot exist without
them. This ridiculous fear of spiders and God knows what else has got
to stop!"'
Before he became a professional punk Lydon was expelled from school at
16 and took a series of odd jobs including a spell as a trainee primary
school teacher. “It was one of the best jobs I’ve ever had,"
he recalls, "I was known as Mr Cabbage Head 'because I had green
hair. I thought that was great. Kids are so smart - and what I'm doing
now is just trying to help them understand things before they're taught
to fear them.
"Once you understand how a creature operates, it's a 'different thing
entirely. People are afraid of things they don’t know about. I'll
quite happily handle black widows, I’ve got them living under my
house in LA and I don't mind them at all because I know that you'd have
to really aggravate one and frighten it before it would bite you."
And it's not just black widows he isn't afraid of. A bile from the brown
recluse spider can leave you with rapidly dissolving flesh, but even so,
Lydon wasn't overly perturbed when a five-incher ran nut of the jar he
was holding, down his face and up his arm, "I knew it would only
bite me if it got under my clothing and I frightened it somehow, so I
staved calm and everything was fine."
However brave he was with his beloved spiders, John's courage did falter
in the face of the mosquito. But he took his own advice, and in one episode
enters a huge wire-mesh tent filled with 3,000 of them. He emerges thoroughly
bitten" but triumphant.
"Mosquitoes have always bothered me. If I’m bitten, I get angry
that something else is living off my blood, so I couldn't believe going
into a cage with 3,000 of them, But when I came out I felt so much better
about myself."
Lydon, who is also on screen this Wednesday in a Five documentary about
gorillas called John Lydon Goes Ape, developed a love of nature early
in life. He's amazed that people didn't know this, and even more confused
that it would seem at odds with what he's supposed to be about, "I
like all living things. I mean, they live!" he shouts energetically.
"It's incredible they're doing it at all, isn't it? What gives them
the energy?"
He says his enthusiasm for living things comes from an early brush with
death, "When I was seven I went into a coma from meningitis and was
in hospital for a year. If things like that happen to you, you really
do appreciate the living," he says, "I've never appreciated
death or been into the Goth movement or anything like that. It's soppy
and stupid."
Besides his love of wildlife, another by-product of the childhood coma
is the famous Lydon stare, As unnerving now as it was in his Johnny Rotten
days, the unblinking gaze that lends Lydon so much of his menace is actually
a result of the bad eyesight caused by meningitis.
The love of wildlife begins to make sense within the many contradictions
of the the LydonlRotten persona when he says: "I would have thought
that Johnny Rotten was known as a creature of the wild, I'm untamed."
He admits to having loved the controversy he caused in The Sex Pistols
- and in the quarter of a century since they split -but, bizarrely, he
says it's not a political thing, "I've never been anti-establishment.
Then you become an 'us against them’,
kind of person. All I've ever done is try to give people a different viewpoint.
For example, you've got royalist and you've got anti-royalists, I'm not
saying either one's is -right, but hopefully we can all live together
happily."
It's an unexpected response from the man who, in The Sex Pistols' Jubilee
year anthem God Save The Queen, wrote: "God save the Queen/ A fascist
regime.
Years of being caricatured by the press have made him defensive. It would
be a mistake to write him off as a cartoon figure, shocking just for the
sake of it. He is impressively intelligent, but although his controversial
nature has got him noticed, it hasn't always got him heard. We seem to
be confused about Lydon - and still a little afraid of him. Ever since
he and his fellow Pistols embarrassed Bill Grundy by swearing on the Today
TV programme in 1976, there has been an element of fear surrounding what
Lydon might say next, Then came Public Image Ltd, his Eighties band, who
by his own account "changed the world for a second time",
When the Pistols reformed in 1996, a generation of punks accused him of
selling out - and now, after I'm a Celebrity, he has achieved the unlikely
status of a national treasure.
"God only knows why," he laughs, "Maybe it's people realizing
they missed out on something way back when." But it's hard to tell
if he's pleased with his new-found acceptability. "I'm still here
and I'm still the same foul-mouthed yob."
Now nearly 50, John Lydon lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Nora, a
German publishing heiress, who is 14 years his senior.
For as long as he has been famous, he has been dogged by accusations of
selling out - and many have taken it badly that he has reportedly made
millions from investing in property. "I'm 49 - am I not allowed to
have a nice house?" he asks wearily. "But I'd feel bad about
myself if I was into expensive items. I'm not one for Ferraris in the
garage. We drive a Volvo - how can you call that an ostentatious lifestyle?"
He's keen on what he calls "real people". In the jungle it was
Jordan who became his bete noire for her "plasticity", and he
is equally scathing about today's pop puppets. "Pink-coated trash,
Britney Spears? How can she yak on about love? She's been married twice
already."
Sadly, he is now about to ride to rock's rescue with a new solo project
- but another collaboration with the surviving Sex Pistols isn't off the
cards, "We're all individuals. We do what we want. If we feel like
it, we might do it, if we don't, we won't."
World-changing rebel, sell-out or national treasure? John Lydon could
be all of these things or none of them, and we might never understand
why.
John Lydon's Megabugs begins today on the Discovery Channel
at 5pm.
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