Bear is a man who has always loved adventure. After breaking his back in three places in a parachuting accident, he fought his way to recovery, and two years later entered the Guinness Book of Records as the youngest Briton to climb Mount Everest, aged only 23. He has since led ground-breaking expeditions across the world. GetFrank got a chance to talk to the no bars explorer who walks the talk (and eats the unimaginable). 

You spend a lot of time in the wild.  Are there any environmental issues that you feel particularly strong about?

I think I have a real sort of pet hate of people who belittle global warming or skeptics.  My experience is those people just haven’t seen what I’ve seen, and I’ve seen it raw, and I’ve seen it close, up, and it’s a very real, you know, worldwide problem that we’ve all got to take responsibility for.

Somebody came up to me the other day and said, oh, it doesn’t matter if the world is getting warmer.  You know, they only see the first tenths of the picture, and what they don’t see is the massive devastation and rise in floods and everything, and the results from that, and droughts and everything.  So I’m a big supporter of all the environmental issues.  I do a lot with a charity called RARE Conservation that works at government and local levels that affect … basically educating people at the local level in these countries, sponsored by the governments, on the implications of deforestation and all that sort of stuff.  That’s a big thing.  Yes.

In July last year, you were named Chief Scout, one of the youngest since its inception.  Knowing so many children look up to you, who is the person that you most respect and admire, and why?

My late dad was a huge influence on me growing up, just as the guy who taught me to climb when I was very young, and really encouraged me just to go for things in life, and to follow my dreams, and not be scared to go for things.

And he always used to say, you’ve got to be the most enthusiastic person you know, and you’re not going to go wrong.  He had a really kind of good set of values about him.  And I kind of see it [now] much more now than I maybe did at the time.  You know, but he’s no longer around.

I’ve got three boys of my own, and I realize actually he was a huge influence on the direction that I went in my life.  And my way of being close to him as a kid was to climb.  That’s how I found that sort of intimacy, and that was a very powerful thing for me.

What’s next for you?   Are there any new world record attempts on the horizon or just a break coming up?

We’re out in LA at the moment, and we’re filming a new series for Discovery called Worst Case Scenario, and it is kind of what it says, you know.  It’s how to survive some epic, big, urban disaster, so everything from earth quakes to blackouts to your car breaks sailing up a mountain, to being mugged, to your elevator cables snapping, to you name it, being attacked by wild dogs.  We just did one yesterday where you drive a car off a bridge, and it skids off and goes into a lake and sinks down, you know, under water.  How do you get out of it from deep down?  So it’s all those sorts of stuff.  I’m just in a car at the moment driving off to get locked in an industrial freezer for 12 hours at minus 40 degrees.  So I’m, yes, putting some extra pairs of socks on in anticipation.  

Given the current wave of natural disasters, do you think that more people are becoming interested in how to fend for themselves, and do you have any top survival tips if you’re caught in one of those extreme situations?

Yes.  Well, I think the kind of lesson on Man vs. Wild and Worst Case Scenario is that don’t take anything for granted, and be prepared, and don’t be afraid of looking silly and over-prepared.  Yes, I’ve seen an awful lot of things go wrong for real out in the wild, and I think doing this new series just reminds you how, you know, disasters happen to people, people never expect would have happened to them.  And every scenario we’ve filmed over the last few weeks, like a day later, I notice something in the press that some lady has just been mauled by wild dogs, or literally we finished shooting this earth quake disaster and showing how you survive the rubble and all this sort of stuff if you’re buried, and the next day the earth quake in Chile happened, so you’re never far from this sort of stuff.  And I think it’s going to be a great new series this year.  I think it’s something that people can relate to, in a way, much more than Man vs. Wild, so I’m really excited about doing this new one.  But, at the same time, we’re still doing lots of Man vs. Wild as well.  

Over 10,000 people have signed a Facebook petition asking you to go to New Zealand.  Have you seen the petition yet?

Yes.  I’ve been trying to push to go to New Zealand for filming for a while, and we’ve been kind of focused on a lot of other places, but I saw the campaign, and I said to Discovery, let’s go for it.  And we’re coming down in the next few months to film in New Zealand, and also in Tasmania, so we’re going to do it - it’s going to be great.  

Sorted that's what we wanted to hear, now:  Before you were married, did you ever use your survival skills to impress the girls, and did it work?

Bear No, it was kind of the opposite.  I always used to think girls would love it when I came back from, around age 14, sort of caked in mud and soaking wet, but all the girls used to, like, run.  So it took me a while to realize that what I think is great and raw and wild and wonderful and everything I love, girls actually don’t really necessarily dig.  So I had to kind of try, on occasion, clean up my act.  That never really worked very well either.  But eventually I found a good girl, Shara, and she kind of – she says she still spends her life chasing me around trying to get me to wear cleaner clothes and stuff, but yes.

The next one, at dinner parties, do your mates ever bring over or serve up odd foods for a laugh about elements of Man vs. Wild?  I’ve seen some action figurines that they’ve done to promote the series.  

My friends tease endlessly about everything.  They’re ruthless, you know.  Yes, it’s definitely become harder to come around if they know I’m cooking, so we kind of tend to have a strict rule that Shara cooks or they cook.  I’m banned from any cooking in the family.  But, no, I endure a lot of grief from my friends nonstop.  I kind of thought once you do a TV show, they’d all be much more polite, but it’s not the case, they’ve got ruthless.

[FYI - some of the things Bear has eaten include: Raw Goat's Testicles, Frozen Yak Eyeballs, Raw Camel Intestines, Live Snakes, and... Polar Bear Shit]

I think that's how you know that they’re really your friends.  They kind of keep you humble and down to earth.

I don’t mind it.  I say, guys, come on.  Cut me some slack.

The next one; what’s the closest you’ve come to death, and I’m going to guess that it might have been in your early 20’s because of your back injury.

I think that I was very lucky with that parachuting accident to survive that, and the doctors and hospitals all the months afterwards used to call me the Miracle Kid for just how close I’d been to being paralyzed, so I was super lucky then, and that’s given me a real gratitude actually just for life.  And I think life doesn’t always give you a second chance.  If it does, it comes with a responsibility to go for it and really grab opportunities and have a smile on your face and not squander life, so that was a close one.  

But I’ve endless close shaves whether it’s falling in crevasses on Everest or nasty sort of animal encounters, jumping on the back of tiger sharks, or getting bitten by snakes, or we had loads of hairy moments just when we did that power motoring over Everest.  I’ve had endless expeditions where I remember crossing the Artic Ocean in a little open … and, again, we should have died so many times on that one.  I hate having these moments, and I try and kind of define my work by the times we get it right, not the times we get lucky.  So that’s why I try and focus on the good times, not the close shaves.

Great philosophy: Just focus on the positives.

Yes.  I think that’s important.