DID YOU KNOW? Ben Fogle

As he continues to follow more New Lives In The Wild (9pm, Ch5), we look at some facts you might not know about the presenter and adventurer...

His mother is the actress Julia Foster, most famous for her role in Alfie (1966), and as Moll Flanders in a 1975 BBC production; his father is author and vet Bruce Fogle, a regular contributor on Jeremy Vine’s Radio 2 show.

He got his TV break in 2000 when he volunteered to be marooned on

Taransay, a remote island in the

Outer Hebrides, as part of the BBC’s millennium project Castaway 2000.

Before finding fame, Ben spent several years in Latin America, working with a turtle conservation project in Honduras and at an orphanage in Ecuador. He also worked for a year as a picture editor on Tatler magazine. He is an extreme sportsman who is not afraid to push himself to the limits – together with his friend, Olympian James Cracknell, he has rowed the Atlantic and crossed Antarctica on foot. In 2009, the pair also cycled a rickshaw 423 miles from Edinburgh to London nonstop. He met his wife, Marina, in a park while they were both walking their dogs. They married in 2006, and now have two children, son Ludo and daughter Iona. He is a man of many talents: as well as being a successful TV presenter, he has had several books published; he is also a qualified ocean yachtmaster and dinghy sailor, and has both scuba diving and rally driving licences; and on top of all that, Ben is fluent in Spanish.