'When I started making shows for the Discovery Channel, I didn't want them to be scripted; adventure is inherently exciting enough,' says ex-military-man-turned-explorer Ed Stafford at the latest of our Traveller's Tales evenings.
Over Portobello Road Gin cocktails in Killik & Co's Mayfair headquarters, he recounted stories of the two years he spent walking along the world's greatest river, the 60 days he was cast away on a Fijian island and of battling extreme weather in the Gobi desert. 'The Darién Gap in South America was the toughest,' he said. 'I was excavating wells for water to seep into and then slurping from them like an animal. I just thought, "What am I doing? I am 41 years old, sleeping on the jungle floor, being bitten by mosquitos and drinking from puddles."'
However, his new series Left for Dead sees him going just as off-grid; marooned in remote locations with nothing but a camera and a medical kit, he has 10 days to find civilisation. Despite it all Stafford hopes he'll still be doing these audacious challenges when he is 73, like his hero Sir Ranulph Fiennes, after whom who he has just named his newborn son.
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