I flunked school, worked for minimum wage and was on the dole – now I’m flying around the world for huge new BBC series

HE tucked into testicles with gaucho cowboys and helped his director overcome a dangerous fever hundreds of miles from civilisation while filming his new BBC travel series.

Journalist Simon Reeve's big and bold new four-part BBC programme, Wilderness, couldn't be further removed from his humble beginnings as a school dropout who worked a series of low paid jobs, when he was able to land work at all.

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The ageless explorer didn't even fly on a plane until he was an adult, but he's crammed enough trips abroad into the 33 years since then to more than compensate.

He has been an ever-present on the BBC for the past 23 years since rising to prominence as a media commentator in the aftermath of 9/11 thanks to his bestselling debut book about Al-Qaeda, The New Jackals.

Now, over four gripping episodes Simon gives viewers an insight into some of the most remote locations in the world from the Congolese rainforest to the wild expanse of Patagonia and the exotic spoils of South East Asian islands.

Speaking exclusively to The Sun, he says: "I feel I've been working so long, mate. I flunked out of school. I've been working forever, basically. I say working, obviously, the telly lark is not a proper proper work, but you know I've done minimum wage jobs back in life. I've been on the dole. I've been on income support. I know how lucky I am now.

"I think I've had my brain filled with encounters and experiences. I feel like I've lived a life, definitely.

"I'm a bit ravaged by the experiences. Obviously you can't go doing these journeys, eating this crappy, cruddy food sometimes and not expect to be impacted by that. I'm creaking. Things aren't working as well as they used to. This is inevitable, but I wouldn't trade it. I'm happy to suffer what I've suffered for the experiences I've had, because they make me feel like I've had some proper experiences in my short existence on the planet, you know."

Presumably the testicles he ate in South America fall under the 'crappy food' category - then again Simon likening them to soft boiled eggs may suggest otherwise.

"I wouldn't say I'll be looking for them at the meat counter in the supermarket," he says. "But you know we are a quite wimpy lot now, in terms of us Brits. You know, our grandparents' generation they would have been eating from top to toe any meat, offal was always on the menu for our ancestors.

"I'm in places where they're eating everything on an animal because they don't get enough meat in their diet, and they're careful about what they consume. So yeah, testicles are on the menu.

"I'll try anything now, I'm alright with that. Bring it on. As long as it's properly cooked. I'll give it a try."

Based in Devon with his Danish camerawoman wife Anya and their son Jake, 12, Simon, 51, could easily seek safer, less intrepid, locations to film.

Over the course of his career he's been locked in a cell by the KGB, caught in a brutal shootout in Somalia, and was more recently left with a scar after getting too close to a whale shark.

His trusted director Eric also had a worrying night at sea after falling ill with a nasty fever as they explored a coral reef near Indonesia.

"His temperature was rocketing up, and we were genuinely worried about him," recalls Simon. "I mean, we were trying to make light of it by joking about how we would make a burial shroud if we had to, you know, have a burial at sea. But I mean, that was just gallows humour, really, we were properly worried.

"That was that was a tough night, actually, as when we were sitting outside, you know, like listening to the sound of breathing as if your child was poorly and we had a couple of other moments. But we all came home safely, and that means it was just dramatic. It wasn't tragic."

Despite these nervy moments, Simon feels confident in his own - and his team's - experience and ability to see them through when the going does get tough.

He says: "I do sometimes think, in truth, that we've got a protective force field around us. So, 'Oh, you know, we're filming. Nothing could go wrong'. Which, of course, it's just stupid.

"I've done this for a while. I've had some proper training. Over the years I've been in a few tricky situations which we've managed to get out of, or talk our way out of, or medicate our way out of. So I do feel that we're able to carefully mitigate risk wherever possible, and then prepare for it as well.

"I really trust the people I work with and that's really, really important. You know, we're like a little military unit, really. And we rely on each other."

It's not all danger though, there is plenty of jaw-dropping natural beauty and human kindness on display too.

While there were countless highlights over the course of the four episodes, Simon's favourite moment was exploring the Coral Triangle off the coast of Indonesia.

"Seeing what lies beneath the waves. That's that's like going to another planet. So that was a moment of total awe and wonder for me, where I am seeing a completely different dimension of our planet and part of the sea which hasn't been fish to death,
where every colour in the paint chart is represented in fish and coral. Oh, my God! That just blows my little British mind! It really does."

Expect to be just as stunned when episode two comes to screens on Sunday night.

Wilderness airs Sundays at 9pm on BBC Two & BBC iPlayer

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