Explorer travels back to his most thrilling... and lethal adventures
SIMON REEVE has travelled to more than 100 countries on six different continents, intrepidly shining a light on human rights abuses, drug gangs and climate change – but even he has been grounded by Covid-19.
After spending 17 years filming his adventures in far-flung locations across the globe, he says his life has completely changed during the pandemic.
And like most parents across the country he is now struggling with home schooling son Jake, nine, with his wife Anya at their Dartmoor home in Devon.
Speaking to the Sunday Express before starting his teaching duties one morning last week, Reeve confesses: “I am finding home schooling very challenging, I give myself three out of 10 for that, partly because one of the problems is unless you are sitting there the whole time it is very hard to know whether an earnest nine-year-old has actually done their maths homework.
“I would say I am not obsessed with traditional education.
“But I do want my son’s mind to be occupied and his imagination fed, so that is more what we have been doing.
“So I am claiming that Lord Of The Rings or The Hobbit at least is proper school work, and that playing a four-hour game of football qualifies as absolute school time.” Reeve, 48, grew up in Acton, west London, but struggled at school, leaving with no qualifications.
His first job aged 17 was as a post boy for the Sunday Times where he was raised up into the newsroom by theneditor Andrew Neil, before writing books on global terrorism.
His TV break came after 9/11. As the first person to have written a book about Osama Bin Laden and Al-qaeda, he was interviewed widely.
This led to talks with the BBC about fronting a different kind of travel documentary looking at the bad as well as good sides of places, with a focus on their communities.
He set off on his first journey around Central Asia in 2003 thinking it would be his last, saying: “I thought it would be the only one I ever did but I loved it from the first moment of the experience and I have loved it ever since.”
This has led to many Incredible Journeys, the title of his latest show starting on BBC Two tonight at 8pm.
This four-part series sees the presenter look back at some of his most memorable experiences during the past 17 years.
Reeve was initially reluctant to join the ranks of lockdown highlight shows.
But after reflecting on his career he decided no one “apart from my mum” had seen all his journeys.
He says: “There is a programme on how we are destroying the planet and another on the dangers I have faced, which are few and far between, and most importantly the people I have met on my journeys, which is the best part for me and what I am really missing.”
The presenter counts a journey around the Indian Ocean for a six-part series in 2012 as among his favourite experiences. He says: “My favourite place was Madagascar. It starts with the capital Antananarivo. It is like nowhere else I have been in the world.
“It’s a mix of dilapidated French colonial buildings and these clay houses with incredibly sloping roofs.
“Madagascar has been separated from Africa for an age and like the Galapagos Islands life has evolved there in a very special and unique way. Not just the
‘I do want my son’s imagination to be fed’ ‘They turn the bones
of dead relatives’
creatures, the reptiles and amphibians, but the human population as well.
“The people have some pretty strange traditions and beliefs, which are eccentric at times and a bit scary in other ways.
“They believe in these taboo beliefs called fada, which can be don’t eat meat on Thursdays. But in some parts of the country they turn the bones of dead relatives and take a very dim view of twins.
“You travel around Madagascar, just as you do the Indian Ocean, with your eyes and mouth wide open.”
Viewers will see him try Xebu (ox) penis soup which he describes as “very chewy and grisly, and not entirely to be recommended”.
But he said it was not as bad as the sandwiches on Russian internal flights, which were “so bland and cardboarded”.
He counts the notorious Somali capital Mogadishu as one of the most dangerous places he has visited.
And he also recalls getting lost in the world’s biggest minefield between the Western Sahara and Mauritania, when his driver and guide could not remember which way to turn.
But being stuck in a lift in a dilapidated hotel in Cuba which “yo-yo-ed” and fell was a terrifying experience.
He says: “You are suddenly thrown into so many movies where that has happened and it is a primal fear now of a lift plummeting.
“It hardly ever happens but it did there. We plummeted and I thought that was it.” Reeve emerged unscathed from the two-floor fall and used the stairs after