Ben Fogle

Ben Fogle
Fogle at BBC Gardeners' World Live 2008.
Born	Ben Fogle (1973-11-03) 3 November 1973
Occupation	Television presenter
Parent(s)	Julia Foster Bruce Fogle
Website	http://www.benfogle.com/

Ben Fogle (born 3 November 1973) is an English television presenter, adventurer and writer.

Biography

Early life

Fogle is the son of actress Julia Foster and broadcasting veterinary surgeon Bruce Fogle. He has two sisters: Emily Fogle and Tamara Fogle.

Education

Fogle was educated at two independent schools: at The Hall School in Hampstead in north London and at Bryanston School in Blandford Forum in Dorset, followed by the University of Portsmouth and the University of Costa Rica .

Early career

Fogle worked on the Picture Desk of Tatler magazine in London before leaving to appear in reality show Castaway 2000.

Castaway

Fogle first came to public notice by participating in the BBC reality show Castaway 2000, which followed a group of thirty-six people marooned on the Scottish island of Taransay for a year starting 1 January 2000. The series attracted an audience of 9 million.

Presenting

Fogle presenting at Crufts 2008.

Fogle has since become a regular television presenter for the BBC, hosting Crufts, One Man and His Dog, Countryfile, Country Tracks, Extreme Dreams With Ben Fogle, Animal Park, Wild on the West Coast and Wild in Africa. He has also reported for Inside Out, Cash In the Attic, Heaven and Earth, and What Are We Like with Jo Brand and BBC 2's "Ben Fogle's Escape in Time". He made a documentary about the Cutty Sark for the History Channel and recently followed Prince's William and Harry on their first joint Royal Tour in Botswana and made an exclusive documentary about the young Princes to be broadcast later this year.

Countryfile

Main article: Countryfile

Fogle appeared on the rural affairs programme alongside John Craven from 2001 until 2008, during which time he reported on a number of the UK's rural pastimes, including coracle racing, the worm charming championships, the lawn mower racing championship, world stinging nettle eating competition in Dorset, oyster eating championships in Northern Ireland, World Conker Championships in Northamptonshire, the alternative Scottish games, world tin bath racing on the Isle of Man, bog snorkelling and the Man versus Horse race in Wales, the Tough Guy Competition, cheese rolling in Gloucestershire, morris dancing, Tar Barrels in Devon, Up Helly Aa in Shetland, the Furry Dance in Cornwall and the British Open Crabbing Championships in Walberswick, Suffolk. In 2008 Ben took part in the World Coal Carrying Championships in Gawthorpe, West Yorkshire finishing in 22nd place.

Fogle left Countryfile after its format revamp in 2008, and is now fronting a new Sunday Morning show Country Tracks.

Extreme Dreams

Main article: Extreme Dreams With Ben Fogle

He presented the BBC 2 series made by Ricochet in 2006 and 2007 in which he selected five members of the public to go on expeditions of a lifetime. Destinations included expeditions to the Kaiteur Falls in Guyana, Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Mount Baker in Uganda, Mount Roraima in Venezuela, the Black Cat trail in Papua New Guinea, the Inca ruins in Peru, the Sahara Desert of Libya, Across the Arctic tundra of Svalbard in the Arctic Circle and most recently a journey across the Andes of South America from the Equator in Ecuador to the tropic of Capricorn in Chile.

Sport

Fogle was the first to cross the line in the pairs division of the 2005–2006 Atlantic Rowing Race in "Spirit of EDF Energy", partnered by Olympic rower James Cracknell, third overall. Whilst competing in the 3000 mile race, the pair had their boat fully capsized by huge waves. They made landfall in Antigua at 07:13 GMT on 19 January 2006, a crossing time of 49 days, 19 hours, 8 minutes. After penalties, they were placed second in the pairs and fourth overall. The BBC series that followed the pair, Through Hell and High Water, won a RTS award in 2007.

He has also completed the six day Marathon des Sables for the World Wide Fund for Nature across 160 miles (260 km) of the Sahara Desert and the Safaricom Marathon in Kenya for the TUSK Trust, with Longleat Safari Park keeper Ryan Hockley. Fogle has completed the Bupa great North Run in 1 hour 33 minutes, the London Marathon and the Royal Parks Half marathon. Fogle beat Eastenders actor Sid Owen in a three round charity boxing match for BBC Sport Relief under the training of Frank Bruno. He recently reran the Safaricom marathon in Kenya with the injured Battleback Soldiers.

In October 2009, Ben and James Cracknell cycled a rickshaw 423 miles from Edinburgh to London non stop. The team took 60 hours to reach the capital, raising money for SSAFA (Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Families Association) The event was filmed for ITV's Pride of Britain Awards.

Fogle and Cracknell will be embarking on the infamous Tour Divide race in the Autumn, a 3000 mile mountain bike race across the Rocky mountains, from Banff in Canada to the border of Mexico. The current world record is held by American Matthew Lee and stands at 17 days.

South Pole

Fogle teamed up with James Cracknell once again, together with Ed Coats, a Bristol based doctor , as Team QinetiQ to take part in the inaugural South Pole Race. The team took 18 days, 5 hours and 10 minutes to complete the 770 km race, coming second overall, behind the Norwegian Team, who commended them on making it "a fantastic race". Ben suffered hypothermia and frostbite to his nose and the team experienced temperatures as low as -40 °C (-40 °F). The race was filmed by the BBC for the series On Thin Ice and was aired in Summer 2009. Macmillan published an account of their journey, Race to The Pole which became a top-10 bestseller in the UK.

Writing

Fogle has written four books; The Teatime Islands in search of the remaining islands in the British Empire in which he travels to Saint Helena, Ascension Island, the Falkland Islands, the British Indian Ocean Territories and Tristan da Cunha. He also attempted to travel to Pitcairn Island but when the inhabitants learned that he was a journalist, they refused to let him land. Ben claims that they suspected that he was in fact a spy and after some hours of interrogation he was refused permission to visit and sent away from the island. He was also accused of attempting to smuggle a breadfruit on to the island It was short listed for the W H Smith's people's award for Best Travel Book.

He has also written Offshore published by Penguin in 2006 in which he travelled around Britain in search of an island of his own. He visited the Kingdom of Sealand and attempted to invade Rockall in the North Atlantic. In 2006 he published the hit Crossing, published by Atlantic books and co-written with Cracknell followed their Transatlantic rowing bid. In 2009, The Race to the Pole was published by Macmillan and spent ten weeks in the bestseller list.

Fogle writes a weekly Country Diary for the Sunday Telegraph and is a regular columnist for The Daily Telegraph and travel writer for The Independent. He has a column in Sky magazine and has contributed to the Evening Standard, New York Times, The Sunday Times and Glamour magazine. He has interviewed Gordon Brown for the Mail on Sunday's LIVE magazine.

Personal life

In 2006 he married Marina Hunt, co-founder of Kasimira party organisers whom he met whilst walking his black Labrador Retriever, Inca. On 10 December 2009 Ben and Marina's first child Ludo Fogle was born, weighing 7 lb.

While filming the latest series of Extreme Dreams in Peru, Fogle caught leishmaniasis. The illness left him bedridden for three weeks on his return home. Fogle was treated at London's Hospital for Tropical Diseases. Fogle went on to make a documentary, 'Make me a New Face" about children suffering from a flesh eating bacteria called Noma in Ethiopia. The documentary was broadcast on BBC2.

Fogle is the President of the Campaign for National Parks, in which role he backs the Youth Hostels Association and National Parks Mosaic campaign to open up England's national parks to ethnic minorities. Fogle is also: an ambassador for the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and Tusk; a supporter of the Duke of Edinburgh award scheme, and Hearing Dogs for Deaf People; and a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. He is also a patron for the British Hedgehog Preservation Society, the Prince's Trust and Shelterbox.

Fogle was awarded an honorary doctorate of letters by the University of Portsmouth in 2007. On the 13 August 2010 on the programme Would I Lie To You, Fogle admitted (and showed) that he had a tattoo of a nautical star on his right shoulder which he claimed to have acquired at the end of a drunken evening in a pub with the previously unknown tattooist. It also emerged that when not filming, Fogle likes to eat his food from hollow gourd shells in order to "feel more at one with nature".

Television presenting credits

• Countryfile (2001–2009)
• Animal Park (2002–2009)
• Big Screen Britain (2003)
• Death by Pets (2003)
• Spot Relief 2004 (2004)
• The Sand Marathon (2004]
• Wild in Africa (2005 & 2006)
• Through Hell and High Water (2006)
• Crufts (2006, 2007 & 2008)
• Cash in the Attic
• One Man and His Dog
• Wild on the West Coast (2007)
• Extreme Dreams With Ben Fogle (2007–2009)
• On Thin Ice (2009)
• Ben Fogle's Escape In Time (2009-)
• Country Tracks (2009-)
• Make Me A New Face: Hope For Africa's Hidden Children (2010)

External links

• Official website
• Room54 Ltd Ben Fogle Biography Ben Fogle Corporate Speaking
• Ben Fogle at IMDb
• Atlantic Rowing Race
• Ben Fogle Outdoor Sock Range