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Even as a TV presenter, he “can’t stand” watching himself back and mocks the “hideous” photo of himself on his assistant’s Zoom background.For some it may be related or accented by the busyness of the season or the depression that greets a fair number of people this time of the year.Īs a people, the “darkness” may, once again, be related to COVID-19. As a parent, Reeve would also like to see greater guidelines on social media and body image for young people, with restrictions on photoshopped images. His concern is that young people’s imaginations and aspirations will suffer if the same thing happens for them. “My gaze was just a few streets in my area,” Reeve says of his teenage years. His most pressing concern while homeschooling is letting Jake’s world get too small, like his own did. He jokes that he’d only give himself three out of 10 as a parent but says he and his wife were determined to reward Jake for speaking about his “head health” from an early age. Writing about his upbringing also opened a door for Reeve to discuss the subject with his son Jake, aged nine. “People who can seem stable as a rock can have just a few moments of bad luck and they can be thrown into a very difficult place,” he says, noting that poor mental health can affect anyone. The one where…he witnesses a bullfight in Kenya (Eli Marias)
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His memoir was the first time he talked about it publicly and meeting readers on the subsequent book tour highlighted how many people were struggling in his own country. “I can still sense it - it encourages me and drives me forward - but it still lurks there”. Reeve has since found ways to manage his mental health (historically travel and now walking), but says that depression will always be a part of his “wiring”, likening it to a smell. “Within a few years I went from being a terrified, suicidal teenager to a writer,” he tells viewers. After leaving school with no qualifications, he found himself a job as a postboy for The Sunday Times and was later promoted to the newsroom by then-editor Andrew Neil, developing a specialism in terrorism. “It was a very, very life-threatening time for me.” Reeve spent years in counselling but credits the catalyst for his recovery to a lady in a job centre who told him to take things “step by step” - the title of his memoir. “I can still project myself back into those moments and that fear,” he tells me, his voice cracking. At his lowest point, aged 17, he found himself clutching the railings of a bridge and considering taking his own life. He didn’t step on a plane until he was an adult and struggled with depression and panic attacks growing up. “I didn’t go on exotic foreign holidays when I was a lad,” the presenter tells viewers in Sunday’s episode, referencing his teenage years in “tropical Acton”, vandalising cars and letting off fireworks, one of which hit a policeman.
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The one where…he swims with sharks (BBC/The Garden Productions) Travel is top of the agenda right now but not for good reason: UK borders are now closed to anyone without a negative test result, airline chiefs report an industry on its knees, and now the vaccine has raised a new question of whether it will be ethical to travel in a post-Covid world. Since March, however, the world that Reeve, 48, has made a career out of has been under threat. He now has 115,000 followers on Instagram and his 2018 memoir with tales of walking through minefields, dodging bullets on frontlines and journeying across epic landscapes became a Sunday Times bestseller. After a difficult upbringing in west London and almost taking his own life at 17, travel has become a lifeline for Reeve and what started as a postboy job for a newspaper has resulted in a 15-year career bringing flagship travel shows to millions of people. Reeve might be a city boy at heart but like many Londoners trapped in lockdown, he misses the thrill of adventure now. His wife Anya, a camerawoman and former Green Party candidate, had to “slightly” force him to decamp to the countryside eight years ago and he thumps his fist against his chest in pride as he lists the things he craves most from the city where he was born: the people, the bright skies, Hampstead Heath, Soho, grime, “even the cocktails and 24-hour bagels”. “My God, I miss the Tube,” he sighs as dogs Lyla and Obi tug at his heels for a walk.
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Then the man who’s visited more than 120 countries and has been described as a young David Attenborough for his stunning nature footage starts telling me how he misses the Northern line. When Simon Reeve first pops up on Zoom from his cosy Dartmoor bolthole, he appears the very picture of a BBC travel documentarian.