Culture

'Man vs. Wild' Admits Show Is Fake

by Jarrett Martineau | March 19, 2008 at 07:39 am

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In the grand tradition of "reality" programming like Survivor and Hell's Kitchen, where "the truth is much less exciting" than what appears on the telly, Bear Grylls has finally owned up to the fact that his hit show Born Survivor (aka Man vs Wild) is equally and totally staged.

British adventurer Bear Grylls has apologised for misleading viewers of his Channel 4 show, Born Survivor.

The show saw Grylls supposedly abandoned in the wild, but a programme consultant claimed the star stayed in a motel and scenes were set up for him.

"If people felt misled on how the first series was represented, I'm really sorry for that," Grylls told the BBC.

The show's producers have promised the next series of the programme "will be 100% transparent".

"I'm the person that takes the rap for these things, even though I'm not always involved in the editing side of it," Grylls said, "but ultimately it is me on screen

"The truth is much less exciting - we film these things over six days and, after filming the night stuff, we're back with a crew in a base camp lodge - whether it's a tented camp in the Saraha or in Sumatra poncho'd up in the jungle.

"The hotel [can be] four walls but not a roof, or a roof with no walls.

"Yes, we had a lot of those but when we're filming the live night stuff, we're out," he added.

The inconsistencies in the show, which is produced by the Discovery Channel and known as Man vs Wild elsewhere in the world, were raised by US survival consultant, Mark Weinert.

He told the Sunday Times newspaper that Grylls spent nights in a motel in Hawaii when he was claimed to be stranded on a desert island.

The Discovery Channel admitted "isolated elements" were not "natural to the environment", and promised greater clarity for the next series which will be screened in April on Channel 4.