He loves dancing, “whenever I get the chance, really”. For the past 12 years, he has lived in a tiny village in Ardnamurchan, a peninsula on Scotland’s west coast. He says his nextdoor neighbour, Gail – “She’s amazing, I call her my Scottish sister” – texts him when she can hear his music blasting to wish him a good morning. “I’m always dancing and playing music. Never in a million years did I think I’d be on Strictly.” Yassin has appeared on The One Show and as a guest presenter on Countryfile, [12] and in 2021 he joined the BBC series Animal Park about the lives of keepers and animals at Longleat Safari Park. [13] [14] In the same year, he presented Scotland: Escape to the Wilderness, a four-part Channel 4 series in which he took four celebrities ( Martin Clunes, Baroness Warsi, Ben Miller and Richard Coles) to wild locations around Scotland, showing them the local wildlife. [15] In suburban Sussex, naturalist and wildlife photographer David Plummer has transformed his garden into a wildlife haven. As David’s health has deteriorated, he has found wonder and delight in this most familiar of spaces and worked hard to attract our next bird of prey – the tawny owl. Along with camerawoman Katie Mayhew, they witness the moment an owl swoops down and snatches prey from under Hamza’s nose.

Hurtful, hard, like concrete but also the soft, silky, smooth, cool pillow that you lay your head on. It’s like birds singing in the morning with the aurora going over your head at night. That’s love for me.With so much experience in his field, Hamza started working on The One Show as one of their wildlife cameraman, leading him to land his own CBeebies show and Let's Go For A Walk companion book. He can also be spotted on Countryfile and ITV's This Morning, and has filmed and presented Channel 4 shows Scotland: My Life in the Wild and Scotland: Escape to the Wilderness.

Strictly star Hamza can't wait for Scotland's home crowd roar". BBC News. 2 February 2023 . Retrieved 4 February 2023. Everything, for understanding and coping with my dyslexia when it wasn’t diagnosed. They believed in me and fought my corner, and still do. Hamza Ahmed Yassin (born 22 February 1990) is a British wildlife cameraman and presenter, known for his role as Ranger Hamza on the children's television channel CBeebies and his work on shows such as Countryfile and Animal Park, as well as presenting programmes about Scottish wildlife. [1] In 2022, he won the twentieth series of the BBC contest Strictly Come Dancing. When he was eight, the family moved to the UK – his parents had come six months earlier – but instead of viewing the move from a warm and busy family house, surrounded by other children, to life in Newcastle upon Tyne as an upheaval, Yassin embraced it. As a child. I was always looking up and noticing their grace, elegance and intelligence. I’m severely dyslexic and couldn’t read books about them so my mum would drive me to RSPB nature reserves where I’d sit next to birdwatchers and borrow their binoculars, constantly asking, ‘What’s that one?’. It was the love of those birdwatchers, taking on this inquisitive kid, that made me fall in love with the natural world. Those guys and Sir David Attenborough…" The living legend himself! Tell us more…

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Whether you’re spotting common garden birds or hoping to catch sight of the more obscure, Be a Birder invites us all to stop, step outside and listen, and open our eyes to the beauty of these incredible creatures. With Hamza as your guide, you will be able to build your birdwatching confidence and push yourself further afield to find new feathered wonders. If his new villagers did perceive him as different, he says, it was positive. “They wanted to show off their culture to me, which I absolutely adore.” He remembers, with a laugh, being invited to a ceilidh dance, and thinking he was going to the house of a woman called Kayleigh. He seems part of this close-knit community now, hosting movie nights at home and talking with love about “my Scottish parents, Chris and Amanda”, and his nextdoor neighbour Gail and another neighbour, Tom, who rings him up – he puts on a great Highland accent – “‘Hello, Hamza, would you like a bit of exercise today?’ Yes, I would, and I know exactly what it is: we’ll spend half a day chopping logs.” He expressed how “tough” it gets to keep his energy up for so long, revealing that Jowita has to “pull out all the stops” to motivate him.