Simon Reeve turns 52 this year but shows no signs of slowing down. Before our interview begins, I find him wandering around, trying to find coffee for his colleague.
“What about this secret door?” he asked, turning the handle and sticking his head in. Apparently adventure can even be found in the basement of a London hotel.
Reeve can also be found across the Tropic of Capricorn in Australia and in South America, to name just a few of the BBC series he has presented in recent years. Türkiye, Lake District, Mediterranean, Indian Ocean. If you’ve been following Reeve’s two-decade television career closely, you might wonder if there’s room to explore without airlifting him into the middle of Earth’s most remote landscapes.
To enter Wilderness with Simon Reeve. This four-part BBC series explores some of the planet’s most inhospitable places where “nature still reigns supreme”: the Congo rainforests, the Kalahari desert, the Pacific Ocean and the mountains of Patagonia. Green, orange, blue and white. It is, in the words of the show’s executive producer Sam Bagnall, “the most ambitious series yet; it’s extremely challenging”.
The first episode finds Reeve on a boat, speeding down the Congo River, trying with a guide to track down the nomadic hunter-gatherer Baka people, and then the elusive bonobo, perhaps humanity’s closest relative. This is territory few Western people have explored, but it feels familiar to armchair travelers. In the series in the middle of the night, ClanBruce Parry immersed himself in indigenous communities around the world. Meanwhile, Sir David Attenborough’s wildlife documentaries can never be surpassed.
So what sets Reeve apart from the rest? Well, in untouched nature We see a flea being removed from his cameraman’s foot in the dead of night as Reeve looks on in disgust (“this is just disgusting”), we see him participating in an antelope hunt, being attacked by bees, and wandering into remote areas for days. from medical assistance. With this series, we are approaching the limits of what a television production company can feasibly and safely film.
And most importantly, our hero Reeve is not a stone-chested former sailor; Nor is the former director of the BBC. He’s what most people would call normal. In his own words, he is “a tall, thin Englishman”. He takes pride in being properly tucked in, carrying his own gear, and tying his own hammock (there are no Winnebagos in the woods). But his superpower that keeps viewers coming back is his ability to disarm the people he meets along the way. So what is his secret?
“Eye contact definitely helps,” says Reeve. “But actually it’s all in the fiction. ‘Oh, I’m so friendly, what a jolly man.’ “Honestly, I suck as a person and they make me look good,” he jokes; this is his default setting and the real key to his approachability. He adds seriously: “The people on this planet are really nice. “I’m just compromising their kindness.”
The public relations consultant interrupts to order food for Reeve; He had been here for six hours in back-to-back meetings. The man asks for a portion of the chips, but the woman insists on ordering him something more substantial. They settle on fish and chips. I say he must be tired.
“Damn, people work in the mines for God’s sake!” says Acton with mock anger in his tone.
This accent and his background set Reeve apart from his travel publishing peers. He attended a comprehensive school in west London, and his difficult teenage years (getting into trouble at school, contemplating suicide) are documented in his best-selling memoirs: Step by step.
In the voice of an army major, he says: “I don’t come from a traditional background that gives people confidence, let me go directly to the world and start making programs about this.” He actually cut his teeth as a political journalist and wrote about Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda threat in his first book: New Jackals It was published in 1998, three years before the September 11 attacks.
Still, it’s an inescapable fact that he follows a long line of television travel presenters (Ray Mears, Bear Grylls, Michael Palin, as well as Parry and Attenborough) who all fit a particular demographic. Isn’t it time for the BBC’s most authoritative travel presenter to pass the baton to a different voice with a different perspective on the world?
“I’m definitely a privileged white male from London,” he says. “What if I had grown up in the northeast? Not a bad chance at all. So how would this happen?
“The only people who ask me to mentor them or give them advice are all public school students. The person running the media studies course at Preston College is not a teacher at all. “This ambition needs to be encouraged in people,” he puffs his lips. He says this is a much broader social problem. Of course, some things need to change.
“I’m still surprised that I’m representing middle-aged male privilege on television. And I fully understand that I will lose my beautiful job. But I’ll hang on as long as I can by making my shows less about me and more about the people I meet.
Given the opportunity, it can last a while longer. In middle age, it’s clear Reeve still loves the job – “it’s an incredible privilege” – and the fire in his belly is burning bright. If there is anything that will stop him, it will be his body. At one point he shows me a book given to me as a gift by another interviewer, and theatrically holds it a foot away from his eyes as he reads the title. Is he starting to feel old, I ask?
“Last year I was very sick, I had paratyphoid fever. It was the worst illness I’ve had since I caught malaria in 2006. I almost died on both occasions. I was showered with antibiotics and it hurt me. “My intestines will need to be restructured properly,” he says, racking his brain for other physical problems.
“My knees have been a little bad. I have orthopedic shoes…” he trailed off. All things considered, they’re holding up well.
A healthy, outdoorsy home life may have something to do with it. Reeve lives on Dartmoor with his wife Anya (a videographer and campaigner) and 12-year-old son Jake, and says he hopes to one day take his son on expeditions. Even to Congo? Maybe. Although he backed down when I suggested his son follow in his footsteps as a presenter. “I’ll lock your passport,” she responds. “He’s my only child!”
The fish and chips arrive and we’re almost done. But I have to ask one last question, which I promised to ask my mother-in-law (a fan). Soft brown hair, flawless skin, pearly grin. What is the secret to looking forever young?
“This is luck. Everything in life is luck. Of course I have a wig, no I shouldn’t even say that. I once brazenly told a journalist that I had plastic surgery and they put it in an article. My mother went crazy.”
Doesn’t he even dye his hair? He leaned down so I could get a closer look.
“I don’t even dye my hair.”
Botox?
“NO! That’s disgusting,” he said, and then checked himself. “But who knows if I needed it to keep the business going? People do what they have to do.”
Wilderness with Simon Reeve will air on BBC Two and BBC iPlayer on Sundays at 9pm from 21 January.