The Observer
16 09.01.22 News
I worry I’m a climate
hypocrite, says TV
explorer Simon Reeve
Explorer and television presenter
Simon Reeve is troubled by the car-
bon footprint of the travel documen-
taries he makes and sometimes feels
a hypocrite, he has confessed.
Talking candidly about his climate
change guilt and also refl ecting on his
unhappy teenage years this morning
on Desert Island Discs, Reeve accepts
that his journeys to Australia, Cuba
and the Caribbean with the BBC have
given him a damaging environmen-
tal record.
“Personally, I would like to think
there is some tiny value in the pro-
grammes I make, and I hope that mit-
igates in some ways the enormous
footprint that I have, and we have,
making these journeys. I am not sure
we always get it right,” the 49 -year-
old tells host Lauren Laverne.
“I obviously feel many a time like
a hypocrite,” Reeve admits. “We’ve
tried to incorporate from the begin-
ning true, honest stories about what’s
happening to our planet. And ulti-
mately, the only way we’re going to
know what’s happening out there is
by going out there and faithfully cap-
turing it and bringing it back for peo-
ple to see and be shocked by.”
Although in recent years his travels
have showcased Cornwall, the Lake
District and Cumbria, Reeve said his
television career had been built partly
on his natural urge to try things which
others consider dangerous, such as
searching for bears in a forest in the
middle of the night. Documentaries
including Holidays in the Danger
Zone: Places That Don’t Exist , Tropic of
Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn have
involved fi lming in hostile surround-
ings. Reeve cites a perilous moment
when he and his team realised the
place they had gone to for interviews
about the source of an illicit newdrug was actually the den of a crim-
inal gang.
Reeve also talks to Laverne about
his upbringing, which did not follow
the conventional lines of the gentle-
men explorers of Britain’s past. In fact
he reveals he did not fl y on a plane
until he was an adult: “I think that’s
partly why I’m so grateful for the jour-
neys I’ve been on since; I don’t take
them for granted as a result.”
He discusses being “trouble” as a
teenager and clashing with his late
father. He hung around with friends
who stole cars and committed acts of
vandalism. “I was carrying a knife bythe time I was 12 or 13 ... I’m not proud
of what I did or saw or people I knew
were up to ... I knew what I was doing
was wrong,” Reeve says.
When he left school the TV pre-
senter had only one GCSE and faced
an uncertain future. He had no job
prospects and had suffered from
mental illness since the age of 15. He
confi des that he once found himself
“on the edge of a bridge” considering
ending his life.
A kind employee at a benefi ts offi ce
helped reassure him that things
might change, he says. Reeve then
went on to work at the Sunday Times ,
starting in the post room at 17. He
was eventually trusted with his own
news stories, carrying out investi-
gations into organised crime and
nuclear smuggling.
In the late 90s Reeve wrote one of
the fi rst books about al-Qaida and
Osama bin Laden. After 9/11 the book
attracted media attention and he
became a commentator on American
media networks, leading to his broad-
casting career.Simon Reeve
fi lming in
Colombia for his
2015 programme
Caribbean.
BBCGlobetrotting presenter
hopes value of his
documentaries offsets
their carbon footprint
Vanessa Thorpe
Arts and Media Correspondent‘The only way we’re
going to know
what’s happening is
by going out there
and capturing it’
Simon Reeve