Graham Bensinger • E-mail

By his early 20's, Bear Grylls became the youngest Brit to summit Mount Everest after nearly dying in an army parachute accident. Not exactly the average start to a career, but then again, nothing this adventurer does is common. From the Himalayas to the Arctic Ocean, Grylls has braved some of the most challenging waters and terrains.

His childhood passion is now a full-time job as the Man vs. Wild host takes Discovery Channel viewers to inhospitable worldwide locations teaching survival skills, even if that means eating the occasional scorpion or goat’s testicle.

Now 34 years old, after the recent birth of his third child, Bear Grylls spoke via phone to go “In Depth” ...

Graham Bensinger: Congratulations on the new baby!

Bear Grylls: Oh, thank you. It’s been an amazing week, really. We had the baby at home and my wife literally had no pain relief. I’m standing by with a tool box and a pack of Aspirin thinking "Oh my God!" We have a sweet little baby boy and a whole three musketeers of boys now so we’re very lucky.

Bensinger: With your crazy schedule, did you plan to be in town for a prolonged period of time or did you just get lucky and your wife had the baby during one of the brief windows you’re home?

Grylls: It has all sort of worked out good. The good thing about Man vs. Wild is that there isn’t a whole load of other people so it’s quite easy to be fluid with the plans. It happened around Christmas where I normally have a break anyway. I also busted my shoulder just before Christmas in Antarctica so I was off the show trying to get the shoulder better for a couple of months. The shoulder is getting better. The baby has appeared. I’ve got a few more weeks and then we start filming again at the end of February.

Bensinger: How did you hurt yourself in Antarctica?

Grylls: I was leading an expedition trying to promote the use of alternative energies and doing a whole load of stuff from exploring the continental ice shells on these bioethanol-powered jetskis to electric-powered paragliders flying into the mountains. We did a big climb on this unclimbed peak. Then, we were also using wind power for kite skiing which is when you’re on skis and using these huge parachute kites. We were basically in a blizzard steaming along on these skis at 50 mph just licking across the ice. I had just put a helmet on maybe five minutes earlier, mainly to keep my hat on because it was so windy. I went off this edge and just took off on this thing and landed on my head smashing my helmet and breaking my shoulder. I had five very painful days in a tent with no painkillers waiting for an evacuation from there. I was very lucky that I put my helmet on otherwise I would literally no longer have a head.

Bensinger: After it happened, when you’re lying on the ice, what are you thinking?

Grylls: You idiot! You’re such an idiot! But, you know, I do get quite battered in my job. It’s just kind of par for the course. I’ve had so many injuries in my life that it’s ridiculous. I did a list for a journalist the other day and it went on for five pages. I always rely on the quote from Evil Knievel who said, “Bones heal and chicks love scars.”

Bensinger: You weren’t always an international television star and bestselling author. You spent three years in the British Special Air Service and it was a parachute accident that forced you out. Tell me about that.

Grylls: I was in Southern Africa doing a freefall jump. We were over the desert and it was getting dark. My parachute ripped while it was opening. I came spiraling down very very fast. I blacked out, smashed into the desert, and broke my back in three places. In the UK, I spent about a year in and out of military rehabilitation trying to get my movement and confidence back. Again, I was super lucky. The doctor said I came within a millimeter of severing my spinal cord. It was a dark time for me. I think people think I must have been very positive to go from that to climbing to the top of Everest, but it was really just a long struggle of trying to rebuild everything I’d lost.

Bensinger: What did the doctor first tell you?

Grylls: He called me the Miracle Kid. He said you really should not be walking. I remember getting back to this military hospital straight after the accident. They jammed a long injection into my back. I was in a wheelchair. The longer it went on, the more I realized how I must have had some angels looking after me that day. In life, sometimes it does take a good knock to make you realize what you really value.

Bensinger: What did the rehab process entail?

Grylls: I had unbelievable treatment because I was in the military. I was having like eight hours of physical therapy a day. I would go from physiotherapy to pool therapy to physchotherapy to movement classes. It was literally all day every day.  I remember when I would try to get out of this place to go and see my girlfriend, I would climb on my motorbike in my full back brace – literally strapped up in these great big braces and plaster and everything. I look back now and think you’re such an idiot! What are you doing on a motorbike with a broken back!

Bensinger: How did the idea for Man vs. Wild come about?

Grylls: I did a television series in the UK about what it’s like to join the French Foreign Legion. I signed up and a camera crew filmed what happened as I went through basic training. That series did really well over here. Then, Discovery approached me and said we know your background with the military and all of the combat survival stuff. Why don’t we do a show where we drop you into difficult places and you show us what you do to get out of there? I was quite nervous about doing it at the start. I remember saying "no" three times to the producer of it. I said that I don’t want to be a television host and it to be all smiley and slick. He kept saying it doesn’t need to be that and they just want to see me. He said you don’t have to host anything; you just have to tell the camera crew what you’re doing. We tried and it worked, but I’ve always been clear that I don’t want to present a survival show. I just want to do what I’ve been trained to do and the camera crew can follow me and I’ll talk through what I’m doing. I think that’s part of why the show has worked because you get that feel from watching it. I remember after three shows I was exhausted, just wacked, and we’ve done almost 40 shows now! I never in my wildest dreams thought we’d get to this stage. It’s been a great privilege. It’s been driven so much by the small crew I’m with. It’s been the same guys for all of the shows. We’re such a tight team. They’re the unsung hero in all of this. We’re in difficult high pressure environments and we need to look out for each other. I’m really proud of those guys.

Bensinger: What’s the worst thing to happen to the crew on a shoot before?

Grylls: It comes down to the extremes – when you’ve got the real cold or the real heat. We’ve operated in Siberia in the middle of winter when it’s minus-45 degrees every day. Then, we’ve done the Sahara Desert, the hottest desert in the world, in the middle of summer when it’s 130 degrees. The problems we’ve had is the crew getting heatstroke or frostbite. God willing, we’ve been okay. We’ve had a lot of near scrapes with things. Vines breaking when I’ve been on them and taking big falls. Close encounters with big sharks and big crocodiles. I’ve been bitten by snakes. On a whole, we’re very acutely aware and we just need to keep getting it right and looking after each other.

Bensinger: You eat everything from scorpions, to porcupine, to skunk, to camel intestines, to sheep's eyeballs, to goat's testicles, to tarantula, and raw sheep heart, to name a few. When did you first start being adventurous with your diet?

Grylls: (laughs) I’ve been eating like that since I was a kid! I’ve always loved all that sort of stuff. My daddy took me climbing when I was young. We used to love just going outside. I see it now already with my two oldest kids ages five and two. I get back and all they want to do is go outside and find worms and eat them. A part of me is going nooo you’ve got to have a proper job!  The other half is saying that’s amazing and what kids are meant to do. As the shows progress, I always end up eating pretty wacky things. It’s part of survival. Survival requires movement and movement needs energy. You do need to leave your prejudices behind a bit.

Bensinger: But eating worms is a little different than goat testicles or sheep heart! Do you encourage your kids to be that open with their food choices?

Grylls: No, but I did catch my oldest son drinking his own pee the other day! I’m like going no, stop! I don’t let them watch my programs because I just don’t want them to think their dad has a stupid job.

Bensinger: Tell me about eating sheep eyeballs at minus-40 degrees.

Grylls: You know, they’re all bad. I had to eat bear poo the other day. It just comes down to doing whatever you need to do to get out of somewhere. You look at the great survival stories and the people who can survive are those who can put the prejudices behind and just get on with it. It’s all about having the end in mind. You’re doing it for a purpose. Biting heads off snakes isn’t fun, but you aren’t in a survival situation for fun. You’re in a survival situation for one reason and that’s to get out of it.

Bensinger: There was an interesting story I recall about you trying to get honey out of a bee hive and a subsequent snake encounter.

Grylls: I was trying to get honey out of this bee’s nest and just got stung by a few of them. My face swelled up and I basically couldn’t see out of my eyes. We were in the very hot salt pans in Mexico. I remember a big pit viper was there. I was trying to kill it, but I couldn’t see it properly through my eyes. The cameraman is saying it’s coming for you now and I’m trying to get this thing. I eventually get it and eat it. The problem in the salt pan is water so I use the snakeskin to store my pee because I was well hydrated and didn’t want to waste it. The next day, I end up drinking the pee out of the snakeskin. That wasn’t a particularly fun one -- rotting snake and pee.

Bensinger: You’ve obviously been dropped into some of the most inhospitable places in the world. You said you were quite on the edge one time in Scotland while filming an episode. How concerned were you for your life?

Grylls: We had a few different things go very wrong there. I got dropped out of an airplane in really terrible weather. There was a small break in the clouds and they reckoned they could parachute me onto the top of the mountain. They just misjudged the height. I thought I was jumping at about 3000 feet which would give me five seconds to pull the chute, but actually I was dropped at half that. As soon as I was out of the plane, I knew I was way lower than I was meant to be. I pulled the chute, it deployed, and I literally hit the ground like a second later. There was a tenths of a second margin. That was too close. There were a catalog of errors from the pilots and guys there, but these things happen and they’re all working under high pressure fighting against the weather and me saying come on get us in here.

Bensinger: Obviously the Discovery Channel doesn’t want you dying on a shoot, so what happens in a dire situation where you’re teetering on the edge?

Grylls: They tend not to know about all of those moments. We’re a small crew filming far [away]. I was climbing down some vine the other day over a big 100-foot waterfall. I was about halfway down this thing and the vine just popped and broke. I fell about 40 or 50 feet and just disappeared into this whitewater. I smashed into the thing and my head missed a rock by about six inches. Its torrential rain and you’re in the middle of the jungle and can hardly hear yourself think. We get up, ask if we’re all alright, realize we got a bit lucky, and then we get on with it. There aren’t massive debriefs about it all. It tends to happen quite fast. We try to really minimize those moments. We do hundreds and hundreds of these things and only a handful of them have been near misses. That’s definitely what makes me nervous about this show – the number that we do and the fact that we film so fast. The other survival shows take about five weeks to film one program, but we film it in five days so it’s all happening very fast. Then again, that’s how I’ve chosen to do it and I work best when it’s all happening quite live.

Bensinger: You’ve said the most frightening thing you’ve ever done is flying a paramotor over the Himalayas. Why?

Grylls: All of these are scary at the time, but the Everest one is just because of how vulnerable we were to outside things going wrong. If the oxygen froze, we would have been unconscious in 30 seconds, dead a few minutes later, and flying a parachute at 80 mph amongst the biggest mountains in the world. These things are outside your control, it doesn’t matter how big or brave you are. That always makes me nervous.

Bensinger: Your standing pulse before you took off was very high at 150. What is that adrenaline rush like?

Grylls: Bad! I don’t enjoy being scared at all even though I do spend a lot of my time being scared. I always treat fear as if it’s there to sharpen you a bit for what you need to do. My pulse rate was so high for the simple reason that I was scared. You’re in the moment and have to try and deal with it and slow things down to control yourself.

Bensinger: What are the top few survival techniques that every single person should know or immediately learn?

Grylls: I can sum it up much easier than that. Winston Churchill said, “When you’re going through hell, keep walking.” That’s survival in a nutshell. The tougher it gets. When you’re in the darkest hour, that’s the time not to sit down and give up. That’s your time to keep walking. All you’ve got to do is keep moving. Keep being positive. Keep smiling. Keep that sense of humor. Keep walking. You literally walk yourself out of hell. That’s been the greatest help to me through so many difficult moments.

Man vs Wild with Bear Grylls airs Mondays at 10 p.m. ET/PT on the Discovery Channel. Visit the show’s website: www.discovery.com/manvswild