DID YOU KNOW?

Taking on one of his toughest challenges yet in Steve Backshall vs The Monster Mountain (5.30pm, CBBC), he’s a man of many talents – here are some things you might not know…

His love of animals started early – he grew up on a smallholding in Bagshot, Surrey, surrounded by rescue animals; he counted them as his friends, ‘from the asthmatic donkey to the grass snakes in the manure heap’.

After graduating from the University of Exeter with a degree in English and theatre studies, Steve studied martial arts in Japan for a year, gaining a black belt. He is also fluent in Japanese.

His TV break came when he headed to the jungles of Colombia in 1997, armed with just a camera and an idea for a TV series. He sold the pilot episode to the National Geographic Channel, which employed him in

1998 as its ‘Adventurer in Residence’. He stayed with the channel as a producer and presenter for the next five years.

In this BBC documentary, Steve will be attempting to climb the notorious north face of the Eiger in Switzerland. But he is no stranger to difficult climbs – he qualified as an advanced Himalayan expedition leader at India’s Nehru Institute of Mountaineering. He is married to the double-Olympic gold medal-winning champion rower Helen Glover. They tied the knot on September 10, 2016, and are expecting their first child in the summer.

Steve is also a published novelist, having written a four-book fictional series set in the natural world – it’s called The Falcon Chronicles.