HT Brunch Cover Story: Grin and Bear it!

Exclusive: The world’s most famous explorer Bear Grylls on beating back anxiety, and untold stories of adventures with the Indian stars he’s had on his show

Only one thing scares Bear Grylls. The man who faces wild animals and nature at its worst, takes presidents and prime ministers on terrifying rides, and casually cheats death like it’s no big deal, is frightened of... cocktail parties.

Bear Grylls says that doubt is part of life and you can’t run from the scary stuff (Getty)

“Being in big crowded rooms full of people I don’t know in big bustling cities. I get so much more anxious and nervous there than anywhere else,” he admits to me over our quick, intercontinental Zoom call.

Bear took Barack Obama into the Alaskan wild in 2015, when Obama was still President of the United States of America (Getty)

Having just read his new book—a sequel to the 2012 autobiography Mud, Sweat and Tears— this isn’t as much of a surprise as it should be. Never Give Up reveals many behind-the-scenes close calls, and also lays bare Bear’s struggles with self-doubt and anxiety. How does he deal with that, I wonder?

“Doubt is part of life, but I’ve learnt to deal with it,” he says matter of factly. “You can’t run from the scary stuff. You’ve got to walk towards it, embrace it and make the conscious choice to do it. Then, you get familiar with it and learn to recognise it. Then, it becomes a servant to you rather than you becoming a slave to it.”

But then again, who wouldn’t be full of self-doubt and nerves when taking Barack Obama into the Alaskan wild, as Bear did in 2015, when Obama was still President of the United States of America?

Bear with his guests from India on his show (Getty)

“Many people are intrigued as to what it’s actually like to have an adventure with a sitting president,” he chuckles. “I think that’s something I get asked all the time. Everyone wants to know behind-the-scenes, what it’s really like, when things go wrong how do you react, and the same with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. So, those elements of the book are fun to share because so many quirky weird things happened—even on the Modi shoot where we were up against it on many fronts. Those are the stories you’ll never have seen on the show, all the chaos: storms are coming, the raft is sinking, the PM’s Special Protection Force is going crazy, and the PM is just like, ‘Bear I trust you, let’s do this’.”

Star treks

It isn’t just world leaders who travel with Bear on his show. From Kate Winslet to Dave Bautista and Rajinikanth to Julia Roberts, whether it’s India, USA or China, he’s challenged innumerable celebrities to do things we’d never think possible. Why would anyone volunteer to do this?

Bear says it always blows his mind that huge stars really want to do go into the wild to shoot his show as they don’t need the money or the fame (Getty)

“It always blows my mind that these huge stars really want to do it,” the 47-year-old reveals. “They don’t need the money, they don’t need the fame, but I think there’s something that the wild gives us that is intangible, this sense of ‘come on, we’ve cut ourselves and been bitten by mosquitoes, and you know, faced the difficult stuff, but we did it.’”

How real is it, I want to know. “People don’t often know what goes on behind the scenes. It’s an incredible team of unsung heroes, our crew, and I want this book to be a testament to them, you know? They’re amazing,” he says.

What’s next in the India edition? “We’ve got some amazing people coming up in India. I won’t tell you who they are yet, though.”

Book smart

Much like Bear’s previous autobiography, once you understand that the writing is meant to be as if spoken to an audience, you’ll find the pace of Never Give Up surprisingly smooth. But why write a sequel to his autobiography 10 years on?

Excerpts from Bear Grylls’ latest book

“When the first book released, I was so surprised when it flew to number one, and I always thought ‘no, I’m never going to do another one,” Bear says. “But that book ended when I was just beginning my TV career, so you have the stories of my Special Air Service (special forces) selection and climbing Everest, but all the TV stories: Running Wild, Obama and Modi and Netflix and all these things—none of those was stories I’d told. I wanna tell these stories, and I knew what I wanted to call the book: Never Give Up, which is at the heart of so many of my stories and adventures and struggles and failures.”

What do you meme

We’ve all seen the memes featuring Bear Grylls, laughed at them and sent them to our friends. I’ve never spoken to a meme before. Did that open him up to a whole new audience?

“Memes always develop lives of their own and they move from age group to age group, but ‘Never Give Up’ and ‘Improvise. Adapt. Overcome’ have followed me everywhere and I love it,” Bear laughs.

Bear hasn’t not explored Indian food nor watched a Bollywood movie, but plans to rectify both within the next six months (Getty)

So, how up-to-date does he stay with pop culture, movies and—perhaps most importantly—Bollywood? I’m stunned when this adventurer reveals that not only has he never watched a Bollywood movie, but he hasn’t really explored Indian food. But, he adds, he will rectify both “definitely within the next six months”.

So, what’s next for Bear Grylls? He gives me a nugget of hope: “We’ve done our first theme park in the UK (Bear Grylls Adventure) and now we’re building a whole bunch of adventure parks in China. I see the same potential for partnerships in India now, and I’m excited for that.”

Well, now so are we.

From HT Brunch, November 7, 2021

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