Bear Grylls: A Retrospective

Pictured: Testosterone

Science proves that Bear Grylls is a man. No one can dispute that. What Science doesn’t prove however, is just how much of a man he is. I’m fairly sure he eats his cornflakes with a side of testosterone, and then rounds the meal off with a shot of anti-oestrogen, just to confirm, and enhance, his masculinity. Not that he needs it. When Bear Grylls was a newborn, he didn’t suck at his mother’s teet, instead he ordered the wench to get him a fucking steak. And then he climbed a mountain. His sister gave him the nickname “Bear” when he was just a week old. Presumably because at the ripe old age of 7 days, he found himself in an altercation with a sleuth of bears, and in a hard-fought physical encounter, Edward, as he was then known, came out on top. Thus, from that day forth, Bear was his name.

Real men shank turtles in the face and drink their blood

Most people know Grylls because he drinks his own piss and eats stuff that most ‘men’ would rather be de-testicalized than eat. But there’s much more to Bear than that. He left school, trekked around the Himalayas for a bit, and then joined the United Kingdom Special Forces as a trooper, survival instructor, and patrol medic. It’s for these reasons that Bear Grylls will never die. He broke his back after trying to fix his parachute mid-fall, when he could have just used the reserve parachute instead, which is pretty badass. If that wasn’t enough, once he’d got over his broken back (which only took 4 minutes), he climbed up Mount Everest, which anyone will tell you takes more than a smile. He’s also jet-skied around the circumference of the UK, paramotored over Angel Falls in Venezuela, and broke the world record for the longest indoor freefall. Perhaps his meanest feat was crossing the North Atlantic Arctic Ocean in what can only be described as a dingy. This is the stretch of ocean even George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg couldn’t navigate in The Perfect Storm. Grylls and the team went from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to John O’Groats, Scotland. That’s a shit load of treacherous waters to negotiate.

Despite devouring some of the most revolting meals available on this planet, Bear often brags about the amount of protein (which is the manliest of all nutrients) that the scorpion tail, or the sheep’s eyeball contains. Resourcefulness is definitely a masculine trait, and squeezing the liquid out of elephant shit at times of severe dehydration is pretty damn resourceful.
Being Bear Grylls is pretty dangerous, though, and he has had his share of near death experiences. Why does he keep doing it then? Because he remembers that he is immortal. Having said all this, there are many more red-blooded explorers out there whom are lesser known than Grylls. A must-see is Heimo Korth’s documentary “Heimo’s Arctic Refuge”. Stay tuned for a review of this soon.

Phil Decelis