Bear Grylls

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Bear Grylls : biography

7 June 1974 –

Longest indoor freefall

Grylls, along with the double amputee Al Hodgson and the Scotsman Freddy MacDonald, set a Guinness world record in 2008 for the longest continuous indoor freefall. The previous record was 1 hour 36 minutes by a US team. Grylls, Hodgson, and MacDonald, using a vertical wind tunnel in Milton Keynes, broke the record by a few seconds. The attempt was in support of the charity Global Angels.

Northwest Passage expedition

In August 2010, Grylls lead a team of five to take an ice-breaking rigid-inflatable boat (RIB) through of the ice strewn Northwest Passage. The expedition intended to raise awareness of the effects of global warming and to raise money for children’s charity Global Angels.

Media

Grylls entered television work with an appearance in an advertisement for Sure deodorant, featuring his ascent of Mount Everest. Grylls was also used by the UK Ministry of Defence to head the Army’s anti-drugs TV campaign, and featured in the first ever major advertising campaign for Harrods. Grylls has been a guest on numerous talk shows including Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, The Oprah Winfrey Show, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Attack of the Show!, Late Show with David Letterman, Jimmy Kimmel Live! and Harry Hill’s TV Burp. Grylls recorded two advertisements for Post’s Trail Mix Crunch Cereal, which aired in the US from January 2009. He also appeared as a "distinguished instructor" in Dos Equis’ Most Interesting Academy in a webisode named "Survival in the Modern Era". He appeared in a five-part web series that demonstrates urban survival techniques and features Grylls going from bush to bash. He also has marketed the Alpha Course, a course on the basics of the Christian faith. In 2013, Grylls appeared in an airline safety video for Air New Zealand entitled Bear Essentials of Safety, filmed against the backdrop of the Routeburn Track on the southern tip of New Zealand’s South Island.

Books

Grylls’ first book, Facing Up (UK) / The Kid Who Climbed Everest (US), described his expedition and achievements climbing to the summit of Mount Everest. His second, Facing the Frozen Ocean, was shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award 2004., 29 November 2004, www.dailymail.co.uk His third book Born Survivor: Bear Grylls was written to accompany the TV series of the same name. It features survival skills learned from some of the world’s most hostile places. He also wrote an extreme guide to outdoor pursuits, titled Bear Grylls Outdoor Adventures. In 2011, Grylls released his autobiography Mud, Sweat and Tears: The Autobiography, followed by A Survival Guide for Life in late 2012.

Grylls also wrote the Mission Survival series of children’s adventure survival books, and Scouting For All published by the Scout Association in 2011.

Escape to the Legion

Grylls filmed a four-part TV show in 2005, called Escape to the Legion, which followed Grylls and eleven other "recruits" as they took part in a shortened re-creation of the French Foreign Legion’s basic desert training in the Sahara. The show was first broadcast in the UK on Channel 4, Channel4.com and in the USA on the Military Channel.

Born Survivor / Man vs. Wild

Grylls hosts a series titled Born Survivor: Bear Grylls for the British Channel 4 and broadcast as Man vs. Wild in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, India, and the U.S.A., and as Ultimate Survival on the Discovery Channel in Europe, Asia, and Africa. The series features Grylls dropped into inhospitable places, showing viewers how to survive. Man vs. Wild debuted in 2006, and it’s success led to a subsequent three seasons over the next two years.

The show has featured stunts including Grylls climbing cliffs, parachuting from helicopters, balloons, and planes, paragliding, ice climbing, running through a forest fire, wading rapids, eating snakes, wrapping his urine-soaked t-shirt around his head to help stave off the desert heat, drinking urine saved in a rattlesnake skin, drinking fecal liquid from elephant dung, eating deer droppings, wrestling alligators, field dressing a camel carcass and drinking water from it, eating various "creepy crawlies" [insects], utilising the corpse of a sheep as a sleeping bag and flotation device, free climbing waterfalls and using a bird guano/water enema for hydration. Grylls also regales the viewer with tales of adventurers stranded or killed in the wilderness.