British explorer Bear Grylls is best known to TV audiences for Discovery's Man vs. Wild
— known as Born Survivor: Bear Grylls in the UK.
The magic of TV makes Grylls look like the ultimate survivor, but the truth isn't quite
so clear-cut.
From his genuine scrapes with death to embarrassing leaks about his so-called survival shows,
this is the untold truth of Bear Grylls.
School bullies
Anyone who's seen his shows might be surprised to learn that Grylls was bullied in school.
The guy seems pretty tough now, but he wasn't always like that.
In response to the bullying he received at school, young Grylls decided to take up karate
along with a few of his friends.
Three years later he got his black belt and went to train in Japan as the youngest member
of the Karate Union of Great Britain.
Grylls described the experience in his book Mud, Sweat and Tears:
"Each night we slept on the floor in small wooden Japanese huts, and by day we learned
how to fight — real and hard.
The training was more exacting and demanding than anything I had previously encountered."
Military man
After leaving school, Grylls spent several months hiking the Indian Himalayas.
He told The Hindustan Times:
"I spent quite some time in India before I joined the army.
I went out there climbing, and up in West Bengal and all around Darjeeling.
We were in Calcutta for a while and then we were with the Indian Army as well."
Grylls even flirted with the idea of joining the Indian Army himself at the time, but ultimately
decided to enroll in the military at home in Great Britain.
Grylls joined the United Kingdom Special Forces Reserve in 1994 and served with 21 Regiment
Special Air Service, or SAS, for three years, receiving training in everything from desert
and winter warfare to evasive driving, climbing, and explosives.
​Freefall
Grylls might have only been an SAS reserve, but that doesn't mean he got to skip out on
any of the dangerous stuff.
Grylls' second deployment to Africa ended in a terrible accident that almost claimed
his life.
He told The Guardian:
"In Africa, my parachute ripped at 17,000 [feet].
I blacked out, and on landing broke my back.
I spent the next 18 months in braces and plaster.
I was lucky to survive, let alone walk again."
A friend of Grylls who was with him at the time told The Guardian:
"I look back and think of him in the body brace after that horrific parachute fall,
and it's incredible that he survived it.
Then to look at what he has achieved since then, I'd never have thought it possible."
Top of the world
Breaking three vertebrae after a 17,000 foot fall would be enough to put most people off
heights for good, but Grylls didn't let it stop him.
Grylls lived his childhood dream to climb Everest when he scaled earth's highest mountain
in 1998, less than two years after his near-fatal Africa fall.
Everest is obviously no walk in the park, and Grylls almost met his end for a second
time when some loose ice left him hanging on for dear life.
"We were in the first stage of the Everest ascent when the ground gave way, leaving me
swinging on the end of this rope, clutching at these black and glassy walls."
Dinner party
In 2005, Grylls and fellow explorer Lieutenant Commander Alan Veal staged one of the weirdest
stunts of Grylls' career.
They broke the record for the world's highest dinner party when they flew a hot air balloon
to a height of 24,262 feet and climbed down to a dinner table suspended below the balloon,
braving temperatures of minus 50 degrees Celsius.
After enjoying a three-course meal together, the daredevil duo dedicated the venture to
Her Royal Majesty Queen Elizabeth and skydived back down to ground with full bellies.
Controversies
Grylls was the subject of controversy in 2008 when U.S. survival consultant Mark Wienert
started talking to the British media about his time working on Grylls' show Man vs. Wild,
claiming that the star was a fraud.
Wienert revealed that during one episode he personally assembled a Polynesian-style bamboo
raft off-camera only for Grylls to add the finishing touches and take the credit.
And after shooting on the episode concluded, Wienert claims the ex-military man left for
a motel.
And that wasn't the only time the show allegedly faked Grylls' whereabouts, according to the
whistleblower.
Grylls apparently spent a few nights in a luxurious lodge during the filming of the
Sierra Nevada mountains episode.
Grylls responded to the claims by saying, "If people felt misled on how the first series
was represented, I'm really sorry for that...we film these things over six days and, after
filming the night stuff, we're back with a crew in a base camp lodge."
Adventure Dad
When your dad eats bugs and gets peed on for
a living, you're bound to have an interesting childhood.
That's definitely true for Bear Grylls' kids.
When they aren't staying on the houseboat they have moored on the banks of London's
River Thames, Grylls and his family live on a remote island off the coast of Wales.
In 2013, Grylls found himself in hot water with the local council after erecting a huge
metal slide that ended with a drop off a cliff face into the sea below.
Grylls defended his decision by saying:
"The slide is not for the paying public and therefore the health and safety is not for
other people.
It's for me and the kids and friends to use when we are there.
It has an element of danger to it, you do hit the water pretty hard.
But do you know what?
There are a lot more dangerous things around."
He came under criticism again in 2015 when he purposely stranded his 11-year-old son
on a rocky outcrop off the island to serve as a training aid for the Royal National Lifeboat
Institution.
Survivor Games
Bear Grylls is hugely popular in the U.S. and his native U.K., but he also has a massive
following in an unlikely place: China.
Grylls' 2012 bestseller Mud, Sweat and Tears was voted the most influential book in China
the year it was released.
And in 2016, Grylls invited several Chinese celebrities to join him in the wild, including
former NBA star Yao Ming, Olympic swimmer Fu Yuanhui, and Robin Li, one of China's richest
tech moguls.
The show aired under the name Survivor Games and featured a premise similar to Mission
Survive, a UK series in which Grylls takes eight celebrities on a two week hike through
unforgiving terrain and eliminates them one by one.
Despite the country's love for Grylls, however, the Chinese version didn't go over well.
Viewers complained that the show was "tasteless" and "disgusting" after Grylls forced the contestants
to drink their own urine.
Disgusting?
Oh yeah.
But tasteless?
We'll have to trust Grylls on that.
"God there's no getting away from it."
"Pftttt!"
"That really is pretty horrible it's like warm.
And it's salty."
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