MY REAL-LIFE HOLLYWOOD HEROES

My first expeditions with Hollywood celebrities, for a format that eventually became my series Running Wild, threw up some of the toughest conditions I’ve ever encountered. Will Ferrell came all the way up to the Arctic to join me, and it almost killed him. It was -30°C all day and night, with deep snow, steep mountain terrain and just a Twinkie bar for supplementary food. Only his undying humour and quiet fortitude got him through, and my respect for Will grows every time I catch a clip of it on air.

He really is an amazing man to whom I owe just so much. Without his courage to come along on that first-ever, one-onone celebrity adventure, the rest of my career would no doubt look very different. As for Jake Gyllenhaal, we went to Iceland in winter. Jake is without doubt one of the gentlest, smartest guys you’ll ever meet, and he’s also got the adventure bug in spades. But just halfway through that trip we were caught in the worst winter storm in Iceland for over a decade.

Hurricane-force winds high up on the glacier meant that for the first time ever we were forced to stop filming and start surviving for real. Jake just kept smiling and kept going. At one point Dan Etheridge, our cameraman, suddenly got picked up by these hurricane winds and blown across the freezing tundra. He was still holding on to his camera as he flew like tumbleweed across the ice. I grabbed hold of Jake and we cowered against the wind. He was loving it.