Simon Reeve – entertaining world traveller and definitely not a toff!

The Covid-19 pandemic may have made travelling the planet a bit tricky – but that hasn’t stopped adventurer Simon Reeve from making remarkable telly.

Cornwall with Simon Reeve, which aired in November last year, was a fascinating investigation into the future of the county as it emerged from the first UK lockdown.

And now there’s a new, four-part BBC Two series in which the 48-year-old presenter and author takes a look back at some of the most remote destinations he has visited – from Arctic glaciers to tropical reefs – while reflecting on what he has learned from his extraordinary travels.

Ahead of Incredible Journeys with Simon Reeve hitting our screens, we chat to the London-born father-of-one about career highlights, emotional memories and his tough teenage years.

HOW DID YOU FIND THE REACTION TO CORNWALL WITH SIMON REEVE?

It was slightly overwhelmingly brilliant, to be honest. I think people felt that it painted a more accurate picture of Cornwall than a lot of the programmes that are filmed there, and there was quite some surprise from the rest of the country, and maybe even within Cornwall, about the stats and facts about Cornwall’s place on the poverty table.

We’ve just got into such a mindset in this country over a long period of time of everything being on a north-south axis – rich comfortable south and grim up north – and it’s way too simplistic.

HAS IT MADE YOU WANT TO MAKE MORE TV SERIES CLOSER TO HOME?

I think what it’s made me realise – and it was quite a bit of a surprise, frankly – is that Brits are not as buttoned up as perhaps we’ve appeared for a long time and that we’re as warm and welcoming and open – crucially – as anywhere else in the world.

And there might be people who think, ‘Well, yeah, of course we are!’, but my impression was that Brits, they’re not that keen to open up about things when somebody points a camera at them.

IN INCREDIBLE JOURNEYS WITH SIMON REEVE, YOU VIDEO CALL JAHANGIR, WHO YOU MET AS A 10-YEAR-OLD IN BANGLADESH IN 2010…