Bear Grylls and his 'reality' television show.
Bear Grylls just got
pwned...
From the
Daily Mail:
How Bear Grylls the Born Survivor roughed it - in hotels
To viewers of his TV series, Bear Grylls is the daredevil adventurer who catapults himself into world's worst 'hellholes' and then survives on his wits alone.
But it has emerged that far from roughing it in brutal environments, the former SAS man actually spent nights in hotels during filming of his Channel 4 show.
The Eton- educated 33-year- old is also alleged to have choreographed parts of Born Survivor, with many of his spectacular stunts carefully set up by the production crew.
Channel 4 last night began an investigation into the claims, which follow a number of embarrassing incidents in which programmes screened by the station were found to have misled the public.
Grylls's show attracted 1.4 million viewers when it was shown in March and April, with audiences enthralled as he demonstrated gruesome survival tips that included sucking the fluid from fish eyeballs and squeezing water from animal dung.
But an adviser to Born Survivor yesterday claimed that many of his other escapades were not exactly as they seemed on TV.
In one episode filmed in California's Sierra Nevada mountains he was shown biting off the head of a snake for breakfast and boasting that he was living on 'just a water bottle, a cup and a flint for making fire'.
Viewers were not told that he was actually spending some nights in the Pines Resort hotel at Bass Lake, where the rooms have Internet access and is advertised as 'a cosy getaway for families' complete with blueberry pancakes for breakfast.
In another episode when Grylls declared he was a 'real life Robinson Crusoe' stuck on a desert island, he was actually on an outlying part of the Hawaiian archipelago and retired to a motel at nightfall.
Mark Weinert, a survival consultant brought in for the programme, said one show also wrongly gave the impression that the adventurer built a Polynesian- style raft using only materials around him, including bamboo and palm leaves for a sail.
Mr Weinert had in fact led a team that built the raft, which was then dismantled so that Grylls could be shown constructing it on camera.
In another episode, Grylls was filmed attempting to lasso 'wild' mustang in the Sierra Nevada, when the horses were actually tame and had been brought in by trailer from a nearby trekking station.
'If you really believe everything happens the way it is shown on TV, you are being a little bit naive,' Mr Weinert told the Sunday Times.
Grylls has certainly paid his dues but to do such a large mis-representation on TV is not cool.
Survivorman actually does his own stuff -
a lot better show too.
Posted by DaveH at July 22, 2007 11:36 PM