Bio

Simon Reeve – an A-Z of trivia on TV’s golden boy of globetrotting.

By Paul Barfoot

A is for AMBITION

After exiting school with unspectacular grades and a stint on the dole, Simon started his media career sorting mail for eight hours a day as a post boy for ‘The Sunday Times’ at the age of 18. Enthralled by those penning cutting-edge headlines around him, he set about getting noticed by offering to do mundane research for the chief investigative reporter in his spare time – a move that impressed the senior editorial team and fast tracked Reeve to the post of cub reporter.

B is for BROTHERS IN ARMS

Simon’s younger sibling is James Reeve, a professional photographer that has clicked his camera in over 45 countries for the likes of ‘Wallpaper’, ‘Conde Nast Traveller’, ‘Esquire’, ‘The Sunday Times’ and ‘The Observer’ newspapers. In 2005, James was crowned ‘The Independent/Wanderlust/Nikon, Professional Travel Photographer of the Year’ on the strength of his so-called ‘Banned’ project, a series of celebratory shots chronicling freedoms available to Afghans after the Taliban's fall.

C is for CONTRACTING MALARIA

Simon was diagnosed with the life-threatening disease after burning up a 40C temperature, becoming completely incoherent and retching blood in the middle of the night while filming in Gabon for his ‘Equator’ series in 2006. He was struck down after failing to complete the entire course of his anti-malarial medication, and took him more than five months to recover. The ordeal prompted Reeve to become an ambassador of the Malaria Awareness Campaign.

D is for DIVERTING DANGER

Rather surprisingly, Reeve’s top safety tip to travellers is belt up! “Always remember to wear your seat belt. It’s possible you may be travelling in a country where driving tests are not compulsory and the death rate on the roads is ridiculously high. I know it’s mundane but it is amazing how many people stop doing such basic things as wearing a seat belt when they go on holiday… they tend to think that the greatest threat on these journeys is something they might eat or the possibility of being shot at, but it’s actually getting into a traffic accident,” warned Reeve.

E is for ECONOMY

Reeve has never flown first class, and has stated that he’s not particularly interested in luxury travel: “The whole point of my travels is to hang with the locals and, for a brief moment, get a sense of how they live their lives.”

F is for FANTASY DINNER GUESTS

Simon’s fantasy feast would be a hilarious affair, literally: “I'd invite Paul Merton and the cast of ‘Have I Got News For You’, along with the Big Yin [the nickname of Scottish comedian Billy Connolly]. I love laughing between mouthfuls. We'd feast on a roast dinner sloshed down with strong red wine.”

G is for GADGETS

Simon does not travel without his trusty Leatherman Wave multi-tool stashed firmly in his pocket, and considers his iPod to be his favourite luxury item when on despatch in far-flung places. “I have wires to connect it to a car stereo when I'm trying to persuade a taxi driver to listen to my music rather than his crackly radio,” said Reeve.

H is for HYPOTHETICAL LONELY HEART

Simon is married, but if he was single and looking for love in the lonely hearts columns, he says his ad would read something like this: “Second‐hand TV presenter up for grabs. Chassis intact, but with multiple scrapes and dents. High mileage, but low running costs. Seeks careful owner.”

I is for INSPIRED BY

Simon loves the way Bill Bryson writes about the world, and has dubbed the American-born author his all-time ‘travel hero’. He also thinks Michael Palin would make the perfect expedition sidekick because he would love to hear all of his travel stories.

J is for JEDI EFFECT

Fleeing heavily armed Burmese military control in the middle of the night through Burmese jungle is enough to make most of us soil our smalls. But not Reeve, who claims a weird sense of safety keeps his undergarments clean when terror would normally take hold. “Bizarrely, I have this feeling that we are supported by this kind of ‘BBC force field’. You get into a zone where you’re focusing on trying to convey what is happening to the camera and to your friend behind the camera,” explained Simon.

K is for KGB

Reeve was detained for spying by the Russian security agency while on assignment in Transnistria, a breakaway state between Moldova and Ukraine that he visited as part of his groundbreaking ‘Places That Don’t Exist’ series in 2005. Fair play though – he was trying to sneak a peak at a top secret Russian military base from the bushes at the time.

L is for LINGUISTIC LIGHTWEIGHT

“I’m completely crap at foreign languages, I really am. I forget the most basic phrases that I’ve just been told,” confessed mono-linguist Reeve. So he relies on charm rather than tongues to get by on foreign turf: “I travel the world using eye contact and smiling a lot and generally looking harmless.”

M is for MARMITE

You either love it or hate it, or so the famous advertising slogan goes. Simon loves it, and likes to backpack a jar of the vegetable spread for expeditions. “I have also started taking tea with me, which makes me feel about 90!” laughed Reeve.

N is for NASTY DUMP

Simon has butted some pretty putrid lavatory facilities in his time, but considers off-loading on a remote island in western Indonesia as his most challenging on-the-move toilet moment to date. “The toilet wasn’t much more than a stick platform extending off a low ridge, designed to dump business straight into the sea. But I had to go during low tide, and hungry village pigs were waiting eagerly below, fighting their way up through the toilet hatch from underneath, trying to eat more than just my arse. So that was a fairly unpleasant and embarrassing experience!” reflected Simon.

O is for ONE WORLD KUDOS

Simon counts winning the best ‘Popular Feature’ gong for ‘Places That Don't Exist’ at the 2005 One World Broadcasting Trust Awards as one of the proudest achievements of his professional career. “The citation said it made an ‘outstanding contribution to greater world understanding’. You can't get much better than that,” gushed a very chuffed Mr Reeve.

P is for PLANE SILLY

When Simon received his first proper journalistic assignment as a budding talent at ‘The Sunday Times’, he made quite a hilarious and lasting impression on his boss that he was so eager to impress. “I was told to track down two terrorists in Boston, and went dancing round the newsroom at the thought of a flight – but they were in Boston, Lincolnshire,” laughed Simon, who had yet to experience the joys of skyway travel at the time.

Q is for QUIPPING WANNABE

If Mr Reeve could change one thing about himself, he would choose to be blessed with more wit. “I'd like to be funny,” said Simon. “And on time. ‘Sorry I'm late’ has become my catchphrase, to my shame,” he added.

R is for RADIO 4

Aside from family and friends, the thing Simon misses most when circumnavigating the planet is BBC Radio 4. “It’s like wallpaper for me, I have it on almost all day,” revealed Reeve. His favourite broadcast is the daily news show ‘PM’, but he’s not keen on the fictional folk from the fictional village of Ambridge, so switches off when ‘The Archers’ (a soap that has aired on the channel since 1 January 1951) comes on.

S is for SOLDIER-STYLE FITNESS

In preparation for the gruelling physical challenges of filming ‘Tropic of Capricorn’, Reeve joined a pretty hardcore British Military Fitness programme, and absolutely loved it. “You pay about £40 a month to be shouted at by a military trainer. It’s the best exercise regimen I’ve done,” stated super buff Simon.

T is for TERRORISM

Simon hit the journalistic big time with ‘The New Jackals: Ramzi Yousef, Osama bin Laden and the Future of Terrorism’, his debut book that failed to make a dent on the literary landscape when it was first published in 1998, but scored him an overnight international bestseller after the Twin Towers were hit in 2001. “As soon as news desks started typing ‘Osama bin Laden’ into Amazon’s search box, there was really only one book that popped up. Suddenly I had a bazillion TV crews turning up at my house,” remembered Reeve, who was hailed as “perhaps the world’s leading expert on al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden" by BBC news channels. He turned to travel soon after because he felt he could not compete with the massive task forces that the big media machines assigned to covering terrorism in the aftermath of 9/11.

U is for UNINHIBITED

When it comes to travel, nothing is off limits for Reeve. Asked if there was anything he wouldn’t do or anywhere he wouldn’t go, Simon responded: “No! No, I don’t think there is! I’ll do anything really! There is nowhere I wouldn’t go to. And nowhere I wouldn’t’ go back to.”

V is VIKING PASSION

Simon is married to half-Danish Anya, whom he lovingly describes as “feisty, gorgeous and wonderful”. In addition to falling for a Dane that he clearly thinks is pretty foxy, he has also developed a bit of a love affair with her native land during regular visits to his foreign in-laws. “I’m a big fan of Denmark. They seem to have just got life sorted there. It’s a very friendly and happy country. They regularly win the happiest people in the world award in fact – they’re very jolly,” enthused Simon.

W is for WRESTLING

“I had been expecting to risk my health and lose some dignity on my travels, but not like this,” stated Simon after being battered in the ring by La Princesa (The Princess), an accomplished Mexican female masked wrestler. He suffered bruises for more than a month after, and claims the ordeal was the most painful experience of his entire journey around the Tropic of Cancer.

X is for X-RATED SOUP

Mr Reeve has downed some pretty unsavoury plates roaming the world, but none have been quite as unappetising as the serving of chunky zebu penis soup that he sampled from a roadside stall in Madagascar while filming ‘Equator’. Zebu is a kind of Asiatic cow by the way. And penis is, well, penis… and it doesn’t make a great dish according to Simon: “It tasted awful, like eating lumps of grizzle. Maybe it’s the connection with the male appendage, but I ate it with my legs crossed. Horrible!”

Y is for YOGHURT ALLY

Simon’s number one piece of advice to help avoid getting a dodgy tummy while travelling is to reach for yoghurt as soon as you touch down: “I always eat live yoghurt when I get to a country. It’s important to get friendly local bugs in your system as soon as possible.”

Z is for ZERO TOLERANCE

Simon believes that responsible tourism is the future of travel, and has no time for destinations that have no respect for the natural world and no regard for cultural enlightenment. “You can't fault their engineering achievements, but Dubai is pretty much the benchmark for humanity's greatest environmental folly. If we want to survive on this planet we can't build ski slopes on the edge of a desert. Everything is artificial and there's no real local culture. Forget Dubai; go to Oman next door. It is very focused on low-impact tourism,” championed Reeve.