but surely this applies to RM too?
they're in the background. I watch mostly RM, only on the odd occasion have I seen BG. Ray always has a different jacket and different gear in one program, where does he get them from? there ain't no shops where he goes I'd imagine.
When filming overseas, other than the local organisers, Ray has a crew of between 7 and 10 people, nearly all of whom are more than able to walk in/walk out of the locations with him. I think that in all of his overseas shoots Ray take a film crew who are able to do pretty much all that Ray does, when he ‘canoes’ they are in canoes filming him, when he is in an old fashioned tent in the Canadian high Artic they are in a modern tent filming him.
That’s the other thing, when Ray claims to spend a night sleeping under the stars, he does just that, sleeps out under the stars. Not in some B&B or hotel, He hangs his hammock and his tarp and camps out. Ray makes no claims that he, or others, can’t easily prove. In fact having met the chap (once) he come across as quite embarrassed if people overplay his contribution to TV or to bushcraft. He'd rather talk about the people who inspired him, he gives them the credit for his success, be them Hadza, first nation Canadians or the chindit guy who got him interested in judo.
Ray does stuff that most of us never get to hear about, and he doesn’t tell, ex-part time civilian survival lecturer/instructor for the Royal marines. Rumour has it he’s even been seen lecturing/instructing to the Bear,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ffyona_Campbell
Also Wikipedia has some info on BG
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear_Grylls
And a bit on RM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_mears
I did some work with a film crew ( behind the lens) a month or two back here in the NZ Bush... The logistics involved for what I thought would be a small film crew compared to say a BBC production were huge... So if you're making a programme be it BG or RM then the reality is going to be that you're not alone in the wild with you and your sabre 45 for company.... TV is all about suspension of disbelief. For some folk that comes more readily with RM than BG which is cool.
Not everything on Wikipedia about Bear Grylls is the
whole truth For example he was never the youngest Brit to Climb Everest Nor was Bear the leader of the climb when he walked up Everest, and he is no longer (was he ever) the youngest person to achieve the summit. (
James Allen, climbed it at aged 22 in 1995 five years before Bear) . An American girl,
Samantha Larson (18) did it in 2007, and a
Nepalese girl (15) has also climbed it.
His record as the first person to cross the North Atlantic in a RIB has had to be changed to the first
unassisted crossing, as that first
record crossing , had already been done. He would have not even been able to claim even the first unassisted crossing, had one of the first crew not needed urgent medical attention.
His claim to a flyover of Everest has also been
retracted, as he didn’t get closer to Everest than 2 miles, and as all his instruments “iced” up during the flight, and only started working on the return flight. There was no evidence, other photographs that could have been taken anywhere, the claimed altitude records have not been verified. The first two to fly over Everest in either microlight or hang glider were
Meredith-Hardy Angelo D’Arrigo
