Held at gunpoint by drugs traffickers, kidnapped by machete-wielding jungle tribesmen and wrongly accused of murder, few could fail to be blown away by his adventures.
Now Ed Stafford, with his posh, private education and military background, is fast becoming the next Ranulph Fiennes or Bear Grylls, thanks to a string of TV shows and books showcasing his survival skills.
But unlike Fiennes and Grylls, who are both descended from aristocracy, Ed was born to a single mum who fell pregnant at 15 and had to give him up for adoption.
It’s this event which the 39 year-old believes is at the root his string of globe-trotting exploits,
“I don’t think explorers are peaceful or at one with themselves because if they were they wouldn’t have that urge,” he says.
“That chink in their armour is also their strength, but I’d argue it isn’t normal, going away for months at a time when most people have these emotional ties, which are there for a reason.
“You could escape for the rest of your life, but it doesn’t help. If you look at most explorers there’s something a bit odd about them, something that doesn’t quite fit in with society.
“Whether or not that’s my adoption, I’m not sure, but there’s definitely insecurity there, a fear of something in life makes you want to correct it.
“So you do something really tangible you can point towards and say: ‘Look, I’ve achieved this – I’ve proved to myself my own capabilities’.”
Ed was adopted by Barbara and Jeremy Stafford, solicitors who lived in Leicestershire, and he was sent to nearby public school, Uppingham.
Very close to his adoptive parents, Ed was devastated when Jeremy died of lung cancer in 1999.
Afterwards he said: “Mum and I sat outside the spare room hugging each other, with tears streaming down our faces and I could not stop saying out loud, ‘I love you Dad, I love you Dad, I love you Dad’. I needed him to know.
“The strength that held our family together had gone.”
Ed’s greatest achievement – a record-breaking 4,000-mile trek along the Amazon river – was completed in 2010. But even then, he still felt incomplete. After returning to the UK, he launched a search for his biological parents, backed by Barbara.
And his sister, Janie Boanson-James, helped him to track down his long-lost family via Facebook and Google Earth. Even now he still can’t believe what they managed to find.
Ed says: “It turned out my mum Karen and dad Tony, who was 19 when I was born, married nine years later and had two other sons.
“So I have two full blood brothers aged 25 and 27, which is just amazing. The whole thing has been amazing and I’ve met all of the family now – they’re all lovely people.
“Of course, it’s not all immediately happy families and my biological mum and dad sadly split up a few years ago. But I’ve got a lot of respect for them and we’re slowly rebuilding those relationships again.
“There had always been this background intrigue. I looked for my birth family, not because I needed new parents in my life, but because it’s just inherent to want to know.”
Ed has spent much of the past 20 years proving himself via various international expeditions, first as a captain with Devon & Dorset’s Light Infantry regiment, then as security and logistics adviser for the UN during Afghanistan’s presidential elections.
He entered the pantheon of great explorers back in 2008 when he launched a gruelling, 859-day walk along the second longest river in the world, from its origins in Peru to the point where it meets the Atlantic in Brazil.
On his Amazon adventure Ed existed on a diet of rice and piranha, was bitten by about 50,000 mosquitoes and briefly collapsed with exhaustion, hours from the finishing line.
It was on this incredible journey that he encountered the drugs traffickers and savage tribesmen, and he was briefly held after being wrongly accused of murdering someone.
“It was because the people were ridiculously suspicious,” says Ed. “And when I tried to explain I was walking the Amazon they couldn’t understand why I didn’t just get in a boat.
“I walked into a community where a man had gone missing the day before. They assumed I was responsible. I was detained for 24 hours.
“Then, before they let me go, they said my British passport wasn’t valid because it hadn’t been personally signed by The Queen.”
Sir Ranulph Fiennes called his trek “a magnificent demonstration of the stubborn grit you need to succeed in such difficult and dangerous terrain.”
With that endorsement and a place in the Guinness Book of World Records, it’s no surprise Ed was hired to do TV shows and write books.
In the first series in 2012, Ed Stafford: Naked and Marooned, he was dropped on the uninhabited Pacific island of Olorua where he had to draw on his skills and knowledge to survive without food, equipment or clothes.
The second, shown last summer on the Discovery Channel, was Marooned and featured Ed in locations, including Thailand, Rwanda and Arizona.
The adventurer wanted to be as authentic as possible, so he dispensed with a production team – and his clothes – as he filmed the experience himself.
The result was a world away from shows like Bear Grylls’ Man vs Wild.
Ed says: “Bear has been amazing, he’s been so supportive and he’s put in the graft and come up the ranks before going into TV.
“But I see that sort of programme for what it is and it’s entertainment. Is it fun TV? Yes. But is it true to life? Not at all.
“I don’t want to knock Bear or other adventure shows, but I thought there was room for something more real. My shift towards TV was done on the basis that we were going make something that stood out and was genuine and authentic.”
During Bear’s 2007 series, Born Survivor, it was revealed he would often sleep in hotels while filming, rather than spend nights in the hostile environments he was exploring.
“These shows have their own place and they’re done in the traditional way of making TV,” says Ed.
“They might say: ‘OK, we need to do the fire-lighting scene’ so the location manager will find a place, the crew will go in and researchers will go get the firewood and set it all up.
“The cameras will go in and then the host, whoever it is, is told exactly what he needs to do and where. When the scene’s over, if you’re done for the day then you go back to the hotel.
“There’s nothing wrong with that and I was quite surprised when Bear got so much stick when all that hoo-ha about his hotels came out.
“I just though everyone knew that was how TV is made.
“But the backlash from that did provide scope for someone to come in and do those things for real.”
Now Ed, who’s single, says he doesn’t mind the sex symbol tag that comes with being a hunky naked TV explorer.
“But I see through the fickleness of fame,” he says. “The moment you believe the hype, that you’re some kind of warrior, jungle king, then you’ll be devastated when the bubble bursts.
“Although I’ve enjoyed privileges, I also have a chip on my shoulder, maybe to do with my childhood, but I’ve never been comfortable in ridiculously lavish settings.
“At Newcastle University I didn’t play for the university team because it was about what school you came from as to whether you got in, so I played for a local Geordie side.
“Recently, I went to a members club in Mayfair and there were these guffawing buffoons, all ‘Rah-rah-rah’, and it made me shudder.
“Places like that give me the creeps – I’d rather be in a pub with a Guinness, or in the jungle.”
- Naked and Marooned: One Man. One Island. One Epic Survival Story by Ed Stafford, Virgin Books, £16 hardback, £8.99 in paperback from February 5.