British explorer Bear Grylls is best known to American TV audiences for Discovery's Man
vs. Wild, though his time on the hit survival show revealed just a small fraction of his
life.
The magic of TV makes Grylls look like the ultimate survivor - and cynical viewers may
be tempted to wonder what's been edited out along the way - but the truth lies somewhere
in between.
From his genuine scrapes with death to embarrassing leaks about his so-called survival shows,
this is the untold truth of Bear Grylls.
"All in the name of survival!"
Bullied in school
Anyone who has seen his shows will no doubt be surprised to learn that tough guy Grylls
was bullied in school.
In response to the teasing he would endure, young Grylls decided to take up karate.
Three years later he got his black belt and was named the youngest member of the Karate
Union of Great Britain for their trip to Japan.
In his book Mud, Sweat and Tears, Grylls wrote:
"We began to study and train under [...] the most revered karate grandmasters in the world.
Each night we slept on the floor in small wooden Japanese huts, and by day we learned
how to fight - real and hard."
​Military man
After leaving school, Grylls set out on his first Himalayan adventures, spending a number
of months hiking in around the mountainous regions of India.
In an interview with the Hindustan Times, Grylls said,
"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.
I love India.”
Grylls joined the United Kingdom Special Forces Reserve in 1994 and served with 21st Regiment
Special Air Service for three years, receiving training in everything from desert and winter
warfare to evasive driving, climbing, and explosives.
In this time he was deployed to North Africa twice, though his second visit there almost
cost him his life.
Close calls
He 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.
In an interview with The Guardian, Grylls said:
"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."
That was the first of many close shaves in Gylls’ career of risk-taking.
"But then, disaster!"
He’s also survived a rockfall in Yukon, a boulder-fall in Costa Rica, and a mineshaft
collapse in Montana.
And that's just the rock-based near-misses.
He also came close to meeting his maker when he tackled a saltwater crocodile in Australia,
came face to face with a 16-foot tiger shark in the Pacific, and was also bitten by a poisonous
snake in Borneo.
"Ow!
Just got me there!"
​He climbed Everest
After Grylls’ parachute blunder, he decided to make good on his lifelong goal of climbing
Mount Everest.
He told The Guardian:
"After breaking my back I felt that dream had been shattered.
[...] It had been such a dream for so long, since my late father gave me this picture
of Everest that I used to keep on my bedroom wall as a kid."
Grylls not only lived his childhood dream when he scaled earth's highest mountain in
1998, he also made history, becoming the youngest Brit to reach the summit at age 23 and doing
so less than two years after his near-fatal fall in Africa.
​A record-setting dinner
In 2005, Grylls and fellow explorer Lieutenant Commander Alan Veal 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 some 40ft below.
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.
Controversy
Grylls was the subject of controversy in 2008 when U.S. survival consultant Mark Weinert
revealed that during the Hawaii episode of Man vs. Wild, he personally assembled a Polynesian-style
bamboo raft off camera... only for Grylls to add the finishing touches and take the
credit for the raft’s assembly during filming.
Weinert also claimed that after shooting, Grylls left for a motel.
And that wasn't the only time the show faked Grylls' whereabouts according to the whistleblower,
who also said Grylls spent a few nights in a luxurious lodge complete with a TV, hot
tub, and internet access during the filming of the Sierra Nevada mountains episode.
In an interview with The BBC, Grylls apologized, saying,
"If people felt misled on how the first series was represented, I'm really sorry for that.
I'm the person that takes the rap for these things, even though I'm not always involved
in the editing side of it, but ultimately it is me on screen."
​He’s got faith
Despite being away a lot, at home with his family, Grylls is a religious man, with what
he describes as "a lovely quiet faith."
Talking about his approach to Christianity, Grylls said
"If the point is to find community and be encouraged, then I find the best church often
happens with my kids.
We're at home on a Sunday.
[...] That is church."
In 2016, he became the latest celebrity to talk about his time with the Alpha Course,
agreeing to publicly document his experiences with the evangelistic program over the course
of a whole year.
​He's big in China
Grylls' 2012 bestseller Mud, Sweat and Tears was voted the most influential book in China,
so it was only a matter of time before he attempted to crack the Chinese TV market.
He did so in 2015 with a show called Survivor Games, which featured a premise similar to
Mission Survive, a UK series in which Grylls takes eight celebrities on a two week hike
through unforgiving terrain.
Chinese audiences found some of the grittier moments harder to stomach.
"Okay, who wants to eat an eye?"
Viewers complained that the show was "tasteless" and "disgusting" after Grylls asked the contestants
to drink their own urine.
“That really is pretty terrible.
It’s like, warm, and it’s salty.”
Despite complaints, Grylls success in China continued in 2017 after he invited several
more Chinese celebrities to join him in the wild for one-on-one adventures, including
former NBA star Yao Ming and Olympic swimmer Fu Yuanhui . The follow-up program aired under
the name Absolute Wild China.
"And then I put it in here…"