OUTSIDE: Where exactly are you right now?
GRYLLS: I'm on our houseboat on the River Thames in London. It is an old Dutch barge that my wife, Shara, and me bought together when we got married after I left the Special Forces. It's quite ancient and is full of character, despite leaking in several places, but we love it. It's home. I'm also trying to pack, (with much help from my two young boys!) before I leave for Panama, Patagonia and then Siberia, for the next Season of Man Vs. Wild. I'm going to be away from my family now for almost six weeks, which I find the hardest part of my work.

How does the filming of Man Vs. Wild compare with some of your most challenging adventures, like climbing Everest or crossing the North Atlantic in an inflatable boat? Is it more or less difficult in terms of physical or emotional stress?
When you're battling any of nature's wild forces, it demands that you give a lot of yourself to survive. But the difference between making a TV show and a major expedition is quite stark. For starters, at 29,000ft on Everest, in -30oF, the rule book goes out of the window. It is just dangerous. I witnessed four climbers not return from the mountain when I was there, and that shakes your confidence a lot. Likewise in a small open boat in the North Atlantic during a gale force storm, with icebergs all around you, there are no health & safety regulations! These are humbling and intimidating places to be, and at times survival comes down to pure luck. The level of stress in such situations becomes quite high, with every cell in your body focused and concentrating on not making any potentially fatal mistakes.

In Man Vs. Wild I am rarely under that level of stress, although at times it is definitely quite full-on. For example, on the last shoot in the Sahara Desert, the daily temperature was around 150°F. After three days, we had to evacuate two of the crew with heatstroke, one of who was the local Arab guide.

But to me, Man Vs. Wild is a programme that takes my experience of extreme environments and has me show what I have learnt from them. I am there to show what I do to survive.

What do you to recover from filming an episode of Man Vs. Wild or run of episodes? Do you go on any special diet to put on weight? Sleep 12 hours a night? Drink lots and lots of beer?
We always try and have a bit of an evening at the end of each programme. Everyone will have been working long hours, in tough conditions, and we're always pretty exhausted. When I finally fly home, my family ask how it was, I answer either cold or hot, tell my two boys a goodnight story about any crocodile or snake encounter, and that's about it. Then we are back into normal family life for a precious few days or so, before preparation starts for the next programme.

I have to train almost every day back home, and I either do running, circuit training or yoga, which I do to protect my back after I broke it in three places during a freefall accident in Africa when I was younger.

Ultimately, when you film an episode of Man Vs. Wild, which of the following is more important: to teach viewers serious survivor skills or to make entertaining television?
It is about trying to strike a balance whilst doing both. That is often the hardest part to get right. The production team creates a show that's both compelling to watch, and because of that, people learn by default. There is always masses of information that I try and pack in to each show, and I always attempt to do new things that people have never seen, or even considered before, in a survival situation.

But one of my goals for season 2 is to make it clearer that this is not a programme about "textbook" survival. It's more like extreme survival, showing what can be done in desperate situations if you have been trained. I always work within my own capabilities, but these capabilities might be different from other people's. I don't want people to copy what I do, but to watch, hopefully enjoy, and in so doing learn something that might one day save their life. This is the aim of survival: to stay alive, and that means operating within your own, personal skill level.

When people talk about Man Vs. Wild, the first thing they mention are the gross things you eat—eggs right from a nest, raw fish, water from elephant dung, etc. Is this really the hardest part of the making of show for you?
It's definitely the most unpleasant bit! But the crew always seem to enjoy watching me squirm. I judge whether it was good or not by how much the cameraman is retching when we finish! But scavenging food is all part of survival: leaving your prejudices at home and doing whatever it takes to give you energy. Energy in the wild equals movement, and movement is vital in self-rescue. In the early days, Shara wouldn't be that keen on kissing me after each show. Now I don't tell her, and just grab her instead!

But the hardest part of the show for me is being away from my family for so long. The survival stuff I know and am trained for. But it is when you are tired and cold that other emotions often run over. I always keep a laminated picture of them in the sole of my shoe. It's my emotional survival pack. What matters in survival is finding that something inside that can keep you going when the chips are really down.