The Chief Scout and Royal Marine told Louis Theroux that he had found it impossible to discern when he was facing too much risk on TV, citing parachute failures, avalanches, and snake bites as some of the occasions that almost killed him.
Grylls appears tonight on BBC Two’s Louis Theroux Interviews series, showing Theroux around his private island off the coast of Wales, where he spends the summer with wife Shara and their three sons, Huckleberry, Jesse, and Marmaduke.
Speaking on his transition from military service to TV presenting with Born Survivor, a survival skills show that debuted in 2006, he said it was entertaining at first but quickly became dangerous.
“There was a lot of risk in the early days, we had so many tight escapes,” he adds. I’ve been bitten by snakes, caught in rivers, had parachute malfunctions, avalanches, you name it.”
“In your book, you state there were 21 moments when you thought you nearly escaped death,” Theroux asks.
“Yeah, and that was starting to happen all too frequently,” Grylls responds. The programme has to push the boundaries, everything has to be bigger and better, and I have three small boys who were extremely young at the time – I was like, ‘why am I doing this?’
“So my inner voice is saying, ‘Don’t. Be wise, make your own decisions,’ and then I’ve got a winning show structure, and it was a tension.”
Grylls also admitted that being in the public glare was difficult for him and that he was offended by reports criticising his shows and claimed that many of the perilous scenarios he experienced were staged.
“It was definitely hurtful,” he remarked.
It was the first time I’d really been in the press, and I was like, ‘well, I knew doing a public sort of job was a poor choice.'”
“Some is unfair, some is legitimate, some I look back and I made mistakes,” the star continued, “but you’ve got to keep doing your job as best you can.”