In the last month I’ve been touring Australia, Norway and America with this show. The Nottingham date next week is among the last few I’ll be doing in the UK for a long time.
It’s a very interactive show and fun. We do a bit of maggot and worm eating, we teach people how to make fires without using matches or lighters, there’s swinging from the rooftops, we have Scouts involved and I even finish with a song on the guitar.
It’s a chance for people to get to know the person behind the TV shows, to see where the skills from Born Survivor come from. I also talk about what it’s like going through SAS selection, all of the Everest stories...
I hope it’s life affirming. I want to encourage people to get out there and live their life a bit. And follow their dreams.
We have a lot of mums and dads with their kids at the shows which is great.
I have three young boys and they are massively into this stuff, although I’m trying to tone it down a little bit. Their teacher said to me the other day ‘It’s all well and good Marmaduke knowing how to abseil out of a helicopter but his mathematics is suffering.’”
We’re pretty mellow at home. We know how to relax.
Everyone says I must be a nightmare to go on holiday with but it’s not like that. I have enough drama and danger at work.
The last holiday we had was in Zambia about a month ago. It’s a place I’ve done a lot of filming and I wanted to take my family there. I came down one morning and found Jesse our eight-year-old surrounded by a load of these African river guides. He was telling them how to survive a hippopotamus attack. You have to swim underwater because they can’t open their mouths underwater to bite you.
And they were all calling him ‘Dr Livingstone’ and asking ‘where do you know all this stuff?’
I don’t necessarily not want them to do what I do when they’re older. If I’d have been eight years old and somebody had said I could have a job that involved falling out of tress and getting muddy I’d have thought that was Heaven.
My dad always told me you’ve got to follow your dreams and I say the same thing to my kids.
They’re quite wild at the moment and I quite like that in them.
My dad had been a marine commander and was a climber. He taught me to climb at a young age. It was my way of being close to him at a young age. I think it’s what I love about the big expeditions and the Born Survivor journey; you create real bonds with people.
The question I’m asked more than any other is ‘what’s it like drinking your own pee?’ I do think that is basically what I’ve become known for around the World. The answer is ‘bad but it can save your life.’
I’m often asked what the worst thing I’ve eaten is and that was definitely raw goat testicles. That certainly is a bad memory.
And a lot of people do say that there’s the George Forman Grill so I should have the Bear Grylls Grill. I do have a survival range and the knife has become the biggest selling knife in the world. So I look at it as the George Forman equivalent in the knife world.
Bear Grylls brings his Mud, Sweat and Tears Live Tour to the Royal Concert Hall on Thursday May 24 at 7.30pm. Tickets are £39.50 (£100 family ticket) from the box office, call 0115 989 5555 or go to www.beargryllslive.com.
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