Since taking part in the reality show ‘Castaway’ in 2000, Ben Fogle has become one of the nation’s favourite presenters, with a passion for adventure and nature.
He has many strings to his bow: TV presenter, writer, adventurer, documentary maker. Considering he was a shy youngster who didn’t excel at school either academically or on the sports field, Ben Fogle handles the spotlight remarkably well.
Now 51, he grew up in London with his actress mother Julia Foster and Canadian father, vet Bruce Fogle, and two sisters.
His mother starred in 1960s films like ‘Alfie’, alongside Michael Caine, and ‘Half a Sixpence’, with Tommy Steele, and Ben would often dine at home with his mum’s famous friends. In a past interview, he recalled: “Each day she’d turn up at the school gates in a different wig, depending on the character she was playing. I’d sit in her dressing room doing my homework, while she did her performance.”
Home and away
Ben puts his “eclectic” career down to a “mix of luck, opportunity and determination”.
His love of nature was fostered by annual summer trips to stay with his father’s parents in Canada.
“Canada was my introduction to the great outdoors. I’d spend eight weeks canoeing and swimming and fishing, living the polar-opposite life to my urban existence in London,” he has said. The family home in London did not have a back garden.
Little did Ben know how his life would change when, in 1999, he spotted an advert in ‘The Guardian’. Out of 10,000 applicants, he became one of 36 volunteers to take part in the BBC’s reality show ‘Castaway’. Marooned on a remote island in the Outer Hebrides, their challenge was to form a self-sufficient community.
“I was in my mid-twenties, and it sounded like an amazing adventure,” Ben recalled. “I learned a lot about myself and about our relationship with the landscape. It’s when I became a passionate environmentalist – with a small ‘e’.”
Brief encounter
It was a chance meeting while dog-walking in Hyde Park that brought Ben and his now wife Marina together. They soon embarked on a whirlwind romance. A marriage proposal came the day after Ben completed rowing 3,000 miles across the Atlantic with Olympic oarsman James Cracknell, an adventure Ben refers to as his scariest experience.
Marina’s engagement ring was made from a small piece of rope – “I didn’t have time to buy a ring,” Ben wrote in a social media post, “so I made one from some rope on the rowing boat.”
The couple, who married in 2006, have two children, daughter Iona and son Ludovic. Sadly, their son Willem was stillborn in 2014.
Although renowned for his love of adventure and life on the wild side, home is where Ben’s heart lies. In 2019 he and Marina swapped the capital for a £2.2m rural retreat in Oxfordshire.
Something to share
In April, Ben completed a 24-date nationwide tour, ‘Wild’, a follow-on from his successful ‘Tales from the Wilderness’ shows in 2019. The most recent tour embraced everything he’s been up to in the past 15 years, with a heavy emphasis on his popular and long-running Channel 5 series, ‘New Lives in the Wild’, which he has been making since 2013. It sees him travel around the world to visit people who have given up the rat race. Episodes are available to watch on www.channel5.com.
What’s next for the man who can’t seem to sit still for too long and whose TV credits include ‘Countryfile’, which he’s hosted for nine years, ‘Extreme Dreams’, ‘Lost and Found’, ‘The One Show’, ‘Animal Park’ and The Great British Year’? “I want the next few decades to be about giving back: sharing things I’ve learned. I hope I can inspire people not necessarily to change their lives or move to the wilderness but perhaps to step out of their comfort zone.”
Photographs © Channel 5
