Bear Grylls

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 27 November 2011

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Kirsty Young's castaway is the adventurer Bear Grylls.

His first career was with the SAS, but he was forced to leave after a parachute jump went wrong and he broke his back in three places. As he recuperated, he rekindled his childhood ambition of climbing Mount Everest - he went on to become the youngest Briton to reach its summit. His TV series, Born Survivor, has a global audience of more than a billion people who regularly watch him eating the apparently indigestible and risking his life by pitting himself against nature. Married with three young sons, he says: "The unresolved struggle in my life is the fact that I have a job that has an element of danger to it and at the same time I have a gorgeous family - three young boys that are the pride of my life."

Producer: Leanne Buckle.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Kirstie Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Disks from BBC Radio 4.
0:06.0	For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.
0:10.0	For more information about the program, please visit BBC.co.uk.
0:17.0	Radio 4. My castaway this week is the adventurer Bear Grills. He's like a cross between Tarzan and
0:39.4	Hudini drinking the liquid from elephant dung, escaping from a car as it plummets from a bridge, even eating live snakes.
0:47.3	In fact, imagine your deepest, darkest fear, and the chances are bare grillsills tackled it and enjoyed it.
0:54.4	A TV star, his survival shows have a global audience of more than a billion.
0:59.6	His career began when aged just 20, he joined the SAS.
1:04.8	But then a parachute jump went badly wrong.
1:06.7	He ended up with a broken back and had to change his plans.
1:10.2	As he lay in his sickbed, he was inspired by the childhood poster on his wall of the biggest, badest mountain in the world.
1:17.5	He went on to become the youngest Britain to reach the summit of Everest.
1:22.0	Life is funny, he says.
1:23.8	You get focused, start pumping out certain vibes
1:26.9	into the universe, and things often begin
1:29.3	to collude in your favor.
1:32.2	So the start of all- grills then is the mental focus is it's I mean of
1:36.3	course you have to be fit and we'll talk about that but it's about what's going on up here.
1:40.0	Yeah for sure I think the whole kind of battle for survival is always won and lost in the mind.
1:44.8	And I've experienced that many times, whether it's on high mountains or whether it's filming,
1:50.0	you know, the Born Survivor shows, it's about sometimes trying to dig deeper than you believe you can.
1:56.0	And you've got to be as fit as a butcher's dog as well, I imagine. You look like you are.
	...

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