St Tudwal’s island crops up on GCSE English paper
A QUESTION on the controversial waterslide built by survival expert Bear Grylls on his North Wales island put GCSE students to the test this week.
The TV star is well-known for his daring outdoors adventures.
But it was the adventurer’s surprise appearance in a GCSE English Language paper about his North Wales waterslide which has got youngsters across the UK talking.
They were asked to answer a question on a newspaper article about the giant waterslide he had built on St Tudwal’s island – his hideaway off the Llyn Penninsula.
Bear was forced to remove the 80ft steel slide from his private island amid a row with planning officials because it was in an area of outstanding natural beauty.
It is understood the AQA English language question focused on how the picture, headline and subheadline used in the article linked to the main story.
Disgruntled students later took to social media website Twitter to heap blame on Bear for their perceived fail- ure of the paper – which they sat on his 42nd birthday.
Talishya Sherekhan wrote: “I will remember @BearGrylls’ birthday as the day that I messed up on my #aqaenglishlang exam partly bc of him lol.”
Mary Warren joked: ‘@BarGrylls is staring at his computer confused why 16 year olds are bashing him for his slide, he just wanted to have fun.’ Bear himself replied to her tweet, simply writing: ‘Ha!’
And Bear, who said he was aware of his appearance in the paper, retweeted some comments, including one from Harry Knowles @ArcadeOfHoney who wrote: “@BearGrylls loved having you appear in the exam! Brightened my day up! Ps I want a go on the slide.”
Bear bought the island, which is about 700m (2,000ft) long and 200m (650ft) wide, for a reported £95,000 in 2001.
He and his wife Shara, and their sons, Jesse, Marmaduke and Huckleberry, split their time between there and a Dutch barge in London.
He has also previously had an application to create a £580,000 harbour on the island refused.