Bear Grylls’ narrow escape

Bear Grylls is almost cancelled by a television camera, launches a new video game

British adventurer Bear Grylls flirts with death for his television audience, and this season’s filming sessions for Born Survivor (Man vs. Wild in The United States) have been fraught with the usual near-misses. Survival television is made on the narrowest of margins.

This year’s taping has seen Grylls contend with crocodiles in Far North Australia, and shark-infested waters near Papua New Guinea. However, it was the Canadian Rockies that brought Grylls closest to disaster.

Descending down the slope of a mountain, Grylls had to bring himself to an abrupt halt, employing an ice pick. The trailing camera, however, continued down the mountain, narrowly missing the host’s shoulder and head, striking him on the leg.

There were no broken bones, but Grylls was airlifted from the moutainside. His adventures had the better of him.

“It’s a wake-up call,” he told the Press Association. “You’ve just got to get it right every time. You live with danger a lot and you can get blasé, and just can’t do that.”

Grylls’ adventures are not to be replicated by even the most advanced amateurs. However, Crave Games will offer vicarious thrill-seekers a new way to get close to the action this Nov. 16, releasing the “Man vs. Wild” video game.

The game, which will be supported by Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Nintendo Wii, will test the survival skills of players, who will try to guide the digital version of the television host through five hazardous scenarios.

Grylls will have uncountable fatal accidents in the new game. None will be as heart-stopping as a close encounter with a television camera on a mountain face. For that sort of entertainment, you have to tune in to the show.