Posted on 07/25/2007 4:29:29 PM PDT by GSWarrior
TO LIVE up to his public image of a rugged, ex-SAS adventurer, it must have seemed essential for Bear Grylls to appear at ease sleeping rough and catching his own food in his television survival series.
But it has emerged that Grylls, 33, was enjoying a far more conventional form of comfort, retreating some nights from filming in mountains and on desert islands to nearby lodges and hotels.
Now Channel 4 has launched an investigation into whether Grylls, who has conquered Everest and the Arctic, deceived the public in his series Born Survivor.
The series, screened in March and April and watched by 1.4m viewers, built up Gryllss credentials as a tough outdoorsman. In a question and answer session on Channel 4s website, he recalls how station bosses pitched the venture to him stating: We just drop you into a lot of different hellholes equipped with nothing, and you do what you have to do to survive.
But an adviser to Born Survivor has disclosed that at one location where the adventurer claimed to be a real life Robin-son Crusoe trapped on a desert island, he was actually on an outlying part of the Hawaiian archipelago and spent nights at a motel.
On another occasion in Californias Sierra Nevada mountains where he was filmed biting off the head of a snake for breakfast and struggling for survival with just a water bottle, a cup and a flint for making fire, he actually slept some nights with the crew in a lodge fitted with television and internet access. The Pines Resort at Bass Lake is advertised as a cosy getaway for families with blueberry pancakes for breakfast.
In one episode Grylls, son of the late Tory MP Sir Michael Grylls, was shown apparently building a Polynesian-style raft using only materials around him, including bamboo, hibiscus twine and palm leaves for a sail.
But according to Mark Weinert, an Oregon-based survival consultant brought in for the job, it was he who led the team that built the raft. It was then dismantled so that Grylls could be shown building it on camera.
In another episode viewers watched as Grylls tried to coax an apparently wild mustang into a lasso in the Sierra Nevada. Im in luck, he told viewers, apparently coming across four wild horses grazing in a meadow. A chance to use an old native American mode of transport comes my way. This is one of the few places in the whole of the US where horses still roam wild.
In fact, Weinert said, the horses were not wild but were brought in by trailer from a nearby trekking station for the choreographed feature.
If you really believe everything happens the way it is shown on TV, you are being a little bit naive, he said.
Channel 4 confirmed that Grylls had used hotels during expeditions and has now asked Diverse, the Bristol-based production company that made the programme, to look into the other claims.
We take any allegations of misleading our audiences seriously, said a spokeswoman for the channel.
The latest suggestion that Channel 4 may have breached viewer trust comes as the broad-casters supervisory board prepares to issue new editorial guidelines to suppliers in order to stamp out alleged sharp practices that mislead viewers.
Born Survivor is not an observational documentary series but a how to guide to basic survival techniques in extreme environments, the spokeswoman said.
The programme explicitly does not claim that presenter Bear Gryllss experience is one of unaided solo survival.
Nevertheless, the disclosure is likely to disappoint fans of the Eton-educated adventurer, who at the age of 23 became the youngest Briton to scale Everest. Just two years before that he had broken his back in three places after his parachute ripped during a military exercise.
On screen he has emerged as a natural performer, with stunts such as squeezing water from animal dung and sucking the fluid from fish eyeballs.
Grylls could not be contacted for comment this weekend as he was trekking in the Brecon Beacons with his four-year-old son.
Do people really expect him to sleep with the ants?
All shuck and jive as usual.
Oh, you poor, poor man.
You're right, they can be mean. Been out on round ups of wild mustangs, they don't like you to get near them.
So did the guy that was eaten by that Grizzly bear. LOL
Any guy that gets a drink of water form the core of elephant dung is a born survivor in my book. Now, on to the quiz shows!
I watch the Bear on Discovery Channel, but I perfer “Survivorman”. At least he drags his own cameras around instead of a camera crew.
I’d never heard of that show til recently. I plan to check it out when it starts airing again.
Yea! But he was friends with that bear. Ate his girlfriend too.
I have always enoyed it also, but....if you can’t do the walk.....
WHEW! For a moment there, until I read the article, I thought this story was about that guy who lived for years in Alaska in a cabin he built back in the 60s. Remember that show?
This is like the time that Pied Piper Pitt did a quick stopover to visit Cindy Sheehan in a hot Texas ditch and then spent the two nights in the Crawford area in an air conditioned motel.
That one I do like myself.
I think that there’s some staging involved with that show too. I remember one episode in particular filmed in the AZ desert. One important part of that episode involved his search for water. He had to trek quite a distance to find a little spring. IIRC, he didn’t find water until the third day out.
At the beginning of each show, they give the latitude and longitude where they drop him. I got curious and looked up the spot on Google Earth. Then I turned on the layer indicating where known water sources are. The spot where he started out was about 500 yards west of a water source. There was another in the opposite direction about 1000 yards away. A third was located to the south, also about 1000 yards away. So which way did he go? North. And it looked like he had to dodge one tank in that direction too, as well as a few houses along the way! North was also the only direction he could go without hitting a road within a few miles.
He's not much when it comes to survival, but there is some wonderful and grand places to look at that most people will never see in person.
First time I watched him try and build a fire I like to have split a gut. LOL
He should have practiced somewhere?
Survival shows can’t let someone die on TV. If that was worth the ratings, we’d be watching execution TV.
I've seen it and it was a great show I've seen a couple times about Dick Proenneke. Two of the best DVDs you'll ever purchase:
Product Description
"Alone in the Wilderness" is the story of Dick Proenneke. To live in a pristine land unchanged by man... to roam a wilderness through which few other humans have passed... to choose an idyllic site, cut trees and build a log cabin... to be a self-sufficient craftsman, making what is needed from materials available... to be not at odds with the world, but content with one's own thoughts and company... Thousands have had such dreams, but Dick Proenneke lived them. He found a place, built a cabin, and stayed to become part of the country. This video "Alone in the Wilderness" is a simple account of the day-to-day explorations and activities he carried out alone, and the constant chain of nature's events that kept him company.
Other videos/books about Dick Proenneke:
One Man's Wilderness * An Alaskan Odyssey
More Readings From One Man's Wilderness: The Journals of Richard L. Proenneke, 1974-1980 (Paperback)
If you or people you know love the outdoors then the inspirational story of Dick Proenneke surviving the Alaskan wilderness is a must see.
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