Bear Grylls

On the subject of beards or lack of them, my son Greg is a huge fan of the Bear Gyrlls survival programmes. If civilisation ever goes tits up, we’ll be looking to Greg to light fires, set traps for food, advise us on what type of tree bark to use as soap and building shelters for us. Bear has done loads of series on how to survive in the wilderness. Recently he has done episodes accompanied by a variety of celebs including Jonathan Ross, Jake Gyllenhaal and Zac Efron, who was a bit of a wuss. As Bear and Zac were hanging from a sheer cliff hundreds of feet above a raging torrent supported only by a few vines, Zac bleated “Oh Bear. I don’t know if this is the right time to say but I can’t swim.” Bear looked at him a bit skew whiff and said, “Don’t worry mate. It’s not the water that will kill you!” I think Zac did a bit in his pants! Anyway, usually what happens is that Bear gets left in the middle of a swamp/desert/jungle/forest/arctic wasteland and armed only with a knife, a flint, a length of paracord and the clothes he’s stood up in, he sets off to find his way back to civilisation. It normally takes him two or three days to get back. He fords rapid rivers, abseils down cliffs, wades through oozy, slimy swamps and traverses mountainous sand dunes. He eats all kind of crap. Scorpions, snakes, worms, grubs, bark, rotting carcases. You name it, Bear will eat it. At the end of each day he builds a shelter out of anything to hand, lights a fire and cooks some of the crap he’s collected on his travels. He is exhausted, filthy and hungry. The next morning he gets up and he’s clean-shaven, clothes are dry, washed and ironed, teeth are all clean and sparkly and he’s eating a leg of lamb and some toast for breakfast. How does he do that?

Have a great day

More Dick soon

All images were found on the intertube, all round the world web thingy and sourced via Sergei & Larry’s fire engine.