Broadcaster and adventurer Ben Fogle is about to tackle his latest walk on the wild side when he brings his new tour to Malvern this spring.

Best known from hit shows including Animal Park, Lost Worlds and New Lives In The Wild, the popular presenter will share hair-raising and uplifting stories from a life of amazing encounters.

'Wild' will visit 22 towns and cities in May and June, with the 49-year-old appearing at Malvern Forum Theatre on May 10.

The show will see Ben share stories of “hope, possibility and positivity” - all learned from a career which has taken him to some of the most extreme locations in the world.

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But it all began back in 2000 when Ben was one of 36 people to embark on the ground-breaking BBC Castaway series, which saw the adventurous souls ditch the rat race for a 12-month social experiment living on the remote Scottish island of Taransay.

“I think it’s all luck, but you make a bit of that yourself,” he says, reflecting on the past 23 years.

“I have always loved travel, nature, the outdoors – that’s why I did Castaway. But it was a much more intense experience than anything I could have had under normal circumstances.

“I get asked about Castaway a lot and will be talking about it on the tour, as it’s a big part of me and relative to so much of what I do and have done.

“‘Y2K’ was a definitive time. It was pre-mobile phones, social media didn’t exist, so many things were very, very different.

“Now things have changed so profoundly it would be difficult to go back to that innocence and simplicity.

“Heading off to spend a year on an island with a load of strangers, gave me a real grounding, and a foundation of what it takes to make a simple, off-grid life.”

That foundation allowed Ben to build his career and stood him in stead for his many varied TV projects.

Perhaps none more so than New Lives In The Wild, for which he has spent the past 12 years travelling the world to meet people living extreme off-grid lives – in a world now dominated by ease of communication and all-too-often dictated by being on-grid.

“Castaway definitely gave me the qualifications to be able to do a series like New Lives – to spend time with people living their whole life the way I did for 12 months,” he said.

In Wild, Ben will take audiences on a journey to relive some of the inspiring and uplifting tales he has encountered on his travels to places such as the wilderness of northern Sweden, the jungles of Honduras, the hostility of Chernobyl and the mountains of Nepal.

Having previously filmed in Chernobyl, when he met those who returned to live there as it continues to recover from the 1986 nuclear disaster, Ben took the opportunity to go back on a private visit in September, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Early in the conflict, Russian Armed Forces seized the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone – and soldiers were later reported to have radiation poisoning following their operations in the highly contaminated area.

Ben has previously spoken of the emotion he felt at seeing the families he’d previously met there – and more than a year after the invasion he doesn’t see it coming to an end soon.

“I fear this is in for the long run, decades and decades of unrest in that part of the world. I can’t see a quick resolution unfortunately.

“It’s another thing the tour will look at – the effects that war and disaster can have on places, not just the landscape but the people too.

“It seems harsh to say, but war is part of what happens in a world where seven billion people live. It’s another way that man destroys the environment around us – but can also provide examples of how a place can bounce back.”

Tickets for Ben Fogle – Wild are on sale now from https://www.ents24.com/uk/tour-dates/ben-fogle