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From Antarctic tales to the Dales, Ben explores the realities of being a TV star
While viewers are watching him trek across the South Pole, Ben Fogle tells Nicky Solloway why his next adventure will be launched in the heart of the Yorkshire Dales.
Ben Fogle admits he has had his quota of fame.
Perhaps the most successful reality television star ever, he's managed to carve a career which has taken him all the way from being a castaway on the remote Hebridean island of Taransay to an Antarctic explorer.
Yet as the present series of On Thin Ice has shown, there is much more to him than simply having a good face for TV. His latest expedition shows him inching his way on skis to the South Pole, his beard dripping with icicles and his nose unflatteringly strapped up against frostbite.
"Certainly I've broken all the reality TV rules, haven't I? I've extended my 15 minutes of fame and I don't know why that is," he says, revealing a self-deprecation which makes him all the more real. "I've been really, really lucky and I hope I have another 10 years ahead of me."
His latest quest took him on a 480-mile race to the South Pole following in the footsteps of Scott and Amundsen. The British team, led by Olympian gold medallist James Cracknell, skied for 16 hours a day across the bitter wilderness in temperatures of –50C. They slept four hours a night and survived on melted snow and powdered meals.
And like Captain Scott 97 years before them, they were narrowly beaten to the pole by the Norwegians. The sheer exhaustion, the physical pain and the pneumonia-soaked nights in a tiny tent in the frozen wilderness take television armchair travel to a whole new level.
Yet the expedition is even more remarkable given the fact that five days before the team set off, Fogle was still receiving treatment for a potentially fatal disease. He contracted leishmaniasis, the flesh-eating bug on an earlier trip to Peru. The treatment was a course of chemotherapy which made him vomit every night and left him physically drained. It also took a good few weeks off his fitness schedule.
But despite the odds, Fogle is not the one who cracks under the pressure. When Cracknell develops pneumonia and severe frostbite, it is Fogle's relentless optimism and good humour which drives the three-man team on to the South Pole.
In a similar scenario to the record-breaking Atlantic Rowing Race in 2005 when he spent 49 days at sea with the Olympic oarsman in a 21-foot plywood boat, he proved he was not the weakest link. Cracknell and Fogle rowed 24 hours a day in alternating two-hour shifts to set the British record for the East West crossing from La Gomera to Antigua. Again it was Fogle's strength of character which shone through.
He says of Cracknell: "It's a strange thing that he's always the stronger character in the lead up to it and he's the one that starts
to buckle in the latter stages. That seems to be the story of our teamwork to date, but that's probably why we'd like to do it again. We're still very different but we know how to work through that."
Fogle now has an impressive list of dangerous expeditions under his belt and finds it difficult to pinpoint his most frightening experience.
"Rowing the Atlantic was a really tough challenge, being out at sea for the best part of two months and with no contact with the outside world and no support – that was a pretty hairy moment, especially when our boat capsized."
The trip to the South Pole comes a close second. He describes the moment the team walked across the crevasse fields as "absolutely terrifying". The thin snow bridges are every polar explorer's worst nightmare; with every step they took they risked falling through to the hidden dangers beneath.
So what is it that drives him on?
"The mind is very good at filtering out all the scary, boring stuff and it doesn't take long before you start reminiscing and almost missing those experiences. I think it's good to take yourself out of your comfort zone every now and then. We live in a very civilised society where we have everything at our beck and call and I think we've lost that element of risk. Risk has bad connotations now and a lot of school kids aren't allowed to take risks anymore. But risk and competitiveness are important and I never feel comfortable with either of them, but it's a mixture of adrenaline, satisfaction and enjoyment and that's why you push yourself. I've always loved travel and I've always loved adventure but I never realised you could make a career out of it."
In between dashing around Antarctica, Africa and the Andes for programmes such as Extreme Dreams, Fogle has built up a extensive portfolio as a television presenter. He is now filming Country Tracks, a BBC rural affairs programme and has previously been the star of Animal Park, Wild in Africa, Countryfile, Crufts and One Man and His Dog.
He's also managed to write four books, including the best-selling The Teatime Islands, which he says is one of his greatest achievements.
"I never really excelled academically so the fact that I wrote a book in the first place was something," he says, clearly relishing the success. "One minute I'll be at a party in London drinking champagne with Hollywood stars and the next minute I'll be drinking some local brew in the middle of the South American Amazon."
With his wife, Marina, expecting their first child in December, Fogle says he's planning to stay closer to home for the next year and a half.
In fact, the television presenter's latest venture will be launched in the Yorkshire Dales this week. As president of the Campaign for National Parks, Fogle is heading an initiative to encourage more diversity within the national parks. The specific aim is to bring more black and ethnic minority people out into the parks.
A study shows that although 10 per cent of the British population is from a black or ethnic minority, only one per cent of those minorities visit the national parks.
The Mosaic scheme will train about 200 community champions to promote the idea of visiting national parks within their communities. Community champions will be helped with training and fund-raising to organise these trips.
The fact that Fogle has been chosen to spearhead such an initiative might seem an odd choice. As the son of an actress and a TV vet, Fogle still has the plummy accent and tousled hairstyle associated with a boarding school background. And Fogle himself admits he's in a pretty privileged position. Yet it is his love affair with the great outdoors and his sheer enthusiasm which have earned him the job of promoting Britain's wildest countryside to a wider audience.
He says of the project: "I'm a firm believer that the reason the national parks exist and the reason they're so successful is that people are passionate about them and we need people to visit them to retain that passion. So it's important that everyone in this country, irrelevant of their background, religion, or ethnicity, can enjoy them."
While family commitments may bring him closer to home in the foreseeable future, like any great adventurer, Fogle is already looking ahead to his next challenge.
"I've got tons of things I'd love to do one day, whether it's crossing deserts or swimming oceans or climbing mountains. I've always thought you have only one life, so you might as well live it to the full.
"The problem is that once you've done something like the South Pole and rowing the Atlantic, it's quite hard to keep up with the grandeur and scale of it all."
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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