PROFILE. Two weeks ago, Bear Grylls, host of the Discovery Channel’s “Man vs. Wild,” grappeled down a wall at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif., before running into a ballroom for a Q&A session with a group of television critics. While Grylls talked about his incredible feats of endurance on the popular television series, few knew just how comfortable he was navigating hotels.

Though the premise of “Man vs. Wild” is to drop Grylls, who served in the British Army special
forces, into untamed locales with few tools and the expectation that he can find his way out, news has spread that the survivalist isn’t quite roughing it as the show would have
viewers believe.


British television’s Channel 4, which carries the program under the title “Born Survivor: Bear Grylls,” has confirmed the survivalist bunked in a motel on at least two occasions when the series suggested the host had actually spent the night in the wild. Stunts in question include Grylls’ building of a raft, which was allegedly pre-assembled, and the wrangling of wild horses, which the charge maintains were brought in from a trekking station.

“Discovery Communications has learned that isolated elements of the ‘Man vs. Wild’ show in some episodes were not natural to the environment, and that for health and safety concerns the crew and host received some survival assistance while in the field,” the network stated.

Discovery plans to tweak new episodes with a greater “transparency” and add a disclaimer to episodes airing in repeat.

Back in Beverly Hills earlier this month, Grylls did admit that a sizable crew of production staff and local experts are typically set up in a base camp “maybe two minutes by chopper” from where he films.


“Often at nighttime [the cameramen] will get helicoptered out,” the affable, and even quite humble, Grylls said. He went on to explain that his trips are premeditated, and that he receives a detailed briefing on the area before filming begins.


“If you were purely doing textbook survival, where you land, you sit tight,” Grylls said. “You wouldn’t move. That’s really what you want to do, but it makes for quite boring TV.”

Instead, Grylls prepares a “mental sketch map” of his journey and works within his own abilities, skills of which no one can doubt, even if he does get the occasional hot shower and warm bed while the cameras are off. In 1998, at the age of 23, Grylls became the youngest British climber to complete a summit ascent of Mt. Everest — and that was after he broke his back parachuting over Southern Africa.

“I always think there are two ways to live your life: You either live it with a big smile or you are a miserable bastard,” Grylls said of his always-chipper attitude in even the most (at least seemingly) dire circumstances. We imagine the challenge of surviving bad press falls somewhere between squeezing water from elephant dung and avoiding frostbite in arctic Iceland — and he’s already done the latter two.