Charlie Gilmour is veering dangerously close to crazy-bird-person territory.
At least, that’s what he tells me.
The adopted son of Pink Floyd guitarist, David Gilmour, he caused controversy in 2011, when he was sent to prison for 16 months for swinging off a London war memorial.
Now, he’s a 27-year-old journalist living in South London with his wife Janina and Benzene, their pet magpie.
Their unusual life together is the subject of BBC Three documentary, The man who lives with a magpie.
Benzene inspired Charlie to open the world’s first crow café on Easter Sunday, encouraging the public to interact with the often misunderstood crow species.
As Charlie tells me, “She’s only a tiny bird – but somehow she’s managed to take over our entire lives.
“The bigger she grew, the more she s**t, until our bedroom became this world of bird s**t and the rotting dog food we feed her.”
“Sometimes I’ll feed her mealworms, and if I want to treat her like a baby I’ll hold them in my mouth and let her eat them out of my lip. Some people find that quite disgusting, because they are live worms and wriggle and jiggle.
“And we take baths together.”
Benzene has only been living with him for a year, but their bond is obvious.
“She’s quite affectionate. In the evenings she’ll come and snuggle up in the crook of your elbow and make these adorable cheeping noises.”
Charlie recently found out that his biological father, the poet and artist Heathcote Williams, also had an adopted bird. Back in the 80s, Heathcote rescued and tamed a jackdaw, uncannily mirroring Charlie’s own relationship with Benzene.
“Obviously it runs in the family, although his jackdaw disappeared after a few months ”, he says.
Heathcote Williams walked out on Charlie and his mother, novelist Polly Samson, when Charlie was five months old. They’ve since struck up an on-and-off relationship, but Charlie is open about the unresolved issues his father’s abandonment left him with.
At the time of the riots in 2011, Charlie, by his own admission, had turned to substances to deal with feelings of rejection, resulting in what he described as his “ moment of idiocy”.
“Basically the reason I went to prison is because I took drugs for three days and got involved in a riot. I can’t put the responsibility on anyone but myself,” he says. “But there were underlying things going on that were behind all that.”
Charlie served four of the 16 months he was sentenced, then spent four more under house arrest and the final eight on probation.
Today, six years on, Charlie seems to have come to terms with their relationship.
“We met recently at a mutual friends funeral and sort of bonded/re-bonded, and buried the hatchet. We might not be super close, and if I try and take things beyond what he’s comfortable with he sort of clams up, but I’m happy with the relationship we have now.”
For a long time, his biological dad’s attitude to fatherhood made him question his own instincts.
“I’ve always been a bit worried that I would be a hopeless father,” he says.
Yet the rescue of his abandoned magpie, and her clear attachment to him, has made Charlie see himself in a new light.
Benzene fell, quite literally, off a tree and into his life. A year later and Benzene is a fully incorporated feathery member of the family. She will have a home with Charlie and Janina for her 25 year lifespan (should she choose to stay).
“Looking after Benzene is obviously nothing like looking after a baby child. But it has made me realise my biological dad and me are not the same person, and I’m not destined to be hopeless at responsibility.”
“It’s definitely changed my perception of myself as a person. I’m definitely thinking about parenthood now. When something needs you that much,” he reflects, ‘”you can’t help but respond. Even if they’re climbing up on your head and s**tting on it.”
Sorry, what?
“Benzene’s not toilet trained, and loves spending time on my head, so she often s***s there and I won’t even notice,” Charlie says. “I’ll leave the house absolutely covered, hair matted with sticky mess all down my back – which I’ll only realise when I’m on the tube or out somewhere. Then I really feel like a crazy person!”
How would he feel if Benzene decided to leave?
“I think there would be a gap in my life that would be hard to fill. It really would be empty nest syndrome."
