[firestarter]

Times Online


$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')O 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 Grylls’s credentials as a tough outdoorsman. In a question and answer session on Channel 4’s 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 California’s 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.

[jdumars]

I made a video on backyard edibles and straw bale gardening for the worldwithoutoil.org ARG a while back. I asked my wife what she thought of it, and she said she really disliked it. Her reasons were I was too optimistic (she knows I am a hard core doomer) and I was way too much like Bear Grylls... we watch that show and laugh, as it's so ridiculous.

Les Stroud (Survivorman) is the real deal. He also has a show about him living off-grid that hasn't made it to the US yet. I can't wait to see that.

[frankthetank]

I really like "Survivorman". Never watched that "bear" guy. Sounds like a big phony to me.

[Stratovarius]

Oh my fucking god...That was just a major disappointment to me.

[jboogy]

I was just watching it , the outback episode and I swear the exact same question popped into my head; is he really doing what he's saying he's doing or are the camera guys feeding him and letting him sleep in their tent at night? I never suspected he was staying in hotels at night,that really seems like he's a fraud.