and Steve BACKSHALL

As a shirtless photo of the 47-year-old presenter goes viral, he tells Joe Shute how a father-of-three shapes up

Chances are you will have seen it by now. The wildlife presenter and adventurer Steve Backshall, shirtless and ripped, dangling from various bits of fitness machinery like a midlife Adonis. The images – a photoshoot for Men’s Health magazine – went viral this month, confirming Backshall’s status as an accidental hunk, with many asking just how the 47-year-old father-of-three stays in such ridiculously good shape.

Backshall admitted last year during an interview that his days of anyone wishing to see him without his shirt on were well and truly numbered and says he only agreed to do the Men’s Health shoot because they gave him five weeks to prepare. “If they had said it was a week later, I would definitely have said no,” he grins.

The presenter of Deadly 60, whose programmes generally involve travelling to the most far-flung corners of the world, is already an exercise addict – he runs marathons and his training for expeditions involves cycling, kayaking and bodyweight exercises.

But with a period of grace, he decided to take the shoot on as a project and stepped up his regimen. Every morning he downed a smoothie of pulped broccoli, celery, spinach and fruit – “it looks like pond slime and tastes utterly foul” – while he ditched all booze, sugary drinks and snacks. Having a training partner in the shape of his wife, double Olympic rowing champion Helen Glover, also helped. “When an Olympic athlete is next to you throwing weights around, it’s good motivation,” he says.

His daily workout sessions normally take place around lunchtime each day, when their one-year-old twins and two-year-old son Logan are napping.

His sixpack-clenching moment in the limelight aside, Backshall has been forced to play something of a second fiddle to his wife’s own training ambitions in lockdown. Last year, following the birth of the twins, 34-year-old Glover stated her ambition to compete in the Tokyo Olympics and become the first ever woman to be selected for a British Olympic rowing team after having children.

Glover, who won consecutive golds at the London and Rio Olympics, has spent every moment since her announcement in a punishing training regimen, spanning six hours a day. “It’s a full-time job,” says Backshall, who admits he is in awe of the commitment of the woman he married in 2016, having met her at a Sport Relief event two years previously.

“Before she was a mum, she would do her training, sleep and eat. Now she does it and then breastfeeds and plays with the babies, and all on sometimes three or four hours sleep a night. It is

‘Babies need social interaction. I’m desperate for lockdown to end’

brutal. The fact she is doing all that and Tokyo might not happen is even more intense.”

Since making the announcement the couple have been inundated with messages of support and boxes of letters and cards. As for Backshall, out of necessity the great adventurer has become something of a house husband. “I’m really enjoying it,” he says. “I think I probably would be