There are lots of times when I feel the last thing I want to do
is to get up in the morning and go anywhere and get in a bus or on a boat or fly anywhere.
Just want to sit around. Basically, I am quite lazy, I think.
But the travelling kind of energises me,
keeps me... keeps the brain ticking over, keeps the body tested.
I think my family are sort of aware now that it's better to have...
...have a husband or father who's fulfilled rather than frustrated.
And, as I do enjoy the journeys,
they accept that I'm away for a certain period of time, that's what I do.
When I come back... Well, I'm usually flaked out for a long time.
But I'm much happier than if I had to do something else
which my heart wasn't really in.
So, on balance, the family are really good about it.
I... I... I find that...
...having done the journey, I then have quite a long period at home
writing the book or the commentary.
I probably, over a long period,
spend more time at home than most people with a nine-to-five job.
So it kind of balances out, but... um...
...I am restless,
but I do enjoy the sheer pleasure of sitting at a table staring into the middle distance
with a glass of beer and not having to think about anything.
When I started "Around The World In 80 Days", I took lots of phrase books with me
and tried to make sure that I had a few phrases for each country.
It does make it much easier.
I found it quite difficult 'cause I got phrases muddled up.
We'd be in Greece, then in Egypt. You'd have to have another one.
Then you're in Dubai or something like that, and then you're in India.
Um... and what I do now
is I try to just have a phrase
for, "Good morning", "Hello", "I'm English", "Sorry",
which are all you really need to say,
rather than attempt to really learn the language or give a full frontal assault on the language.
Because that's really quite tricky and you can get very easily tripped up.
I do think it's important to be able to say, "Hello" and "Thank you".
"Thank you" is a good one.
And, if possible, something like, "You live in a very beautiful country."
Something disarming like that. But I don't usually get as far as that.
...when I was so little.
It is comedy! Anyway, I've got to walk on the boat. See you later.
For the programmes we're making...
...to have a lot of... a lot of a foreign language
means subtitles and translation.
I think that puts a barrier between myself, the person I'm interviewing and the viewer.
So that's why we tend to interview people who have a certain amount of English
or interview people who I can understand a certain amount of,
so I can translate it myself.
We try to avoid long subtitles. It's just easier.
"Full Circle", I think, was gastronomically the most challenging of all the journeys.
We did have some very strange things to eat.
Maggots in Mexico City,
and this very, very strong, smelly fruit called durian.
I think it's a delicacy in Java, I think.
Anyway, it smells absolutely foul. Apparently, they don't allow it on airlines for that reason.
One bite of durian and the whole plane just sort of stinks for weeks.
I had to experiment eating that, and it's fine once you eat it.
It's a bit like, I suppose...
...the Chinese and certainly the Japanese,
whose standards of food are absolutely so high
that you rarely have anything bad to eat there, but cheese, they don't know about at all.
So I suppose, to them, a slab of Stilton
would be what durian is to us - something absolutely foul.
But, actually, once you eat it, it's OK.
Soft like banana. Well, this is a first. You don't see durian-tasting often.
Are you going to have some, as well?
I'll 'ave some if you 'ave some, Eko.
- Here we go. - One, two, three.
- Yummy. - Mm. Oh, God.
That is a very strange taste, isn't it?
I think probably the most unlikely thing I ever took
was a drink in Peru,
in a village on the Urubamba River.
And we never really quite captured it on film.
We filmed there, but almost as soon as we'd landed... Everything was very unfamiliar.
This is a small Machiguenga Indian village.
And almost as soon as we landed,
this old lady came up with a gourd full of pink liquid - it looked like yogurt -
and handed it to me and said, "Oh, please."
It would have been rude to turn it down, so I said, "Thank you very much."
And she looked at me with great gratitude and pleasure.
Then I asked what it was and someone said, "Well, they make this as a special palm wine.
"It's quite strong. They make it for a festival, the festival of St John.
"And very often they cut down almost the entire sugar crop around a village to ferment this,
"it's so important to make this strong drink."
So I was smiling and the old lady was looking at me, and then the guide added,
"In places where there isn't any sugar growing, it's fermented by the saliva from the old ladies.
"They spit into it."
There was a pause. I realised why she was smiling at me.
I said to the guide, "Is there much sugar grown around this area?"
Bit of a pause. "No."
- I'm game for anything. - Cheers.
Here you are, Nigel. Looks lovely, doesn't it?
I don't think I'd have drunk it if someone'd said, "Here's some palm wine with saliva. Try it."
I don't think I would, but I did, and that's part of the enjoyment of these journeys.
You have to sometimes forget about your inhibitions
and throw caution to the winds.
The rewards sometimes are quite extraordinary.
Mayumi Nobetsu was one of the earliest fans I ever had.
Not just for the travel shows. Right back to Python.
It was wonderful to get this Japanese girl sending these beautiful letters
with little drawings of the knights of the Holy Grail and all that.
And so, when we were going to Tokyo,
the director said, "It's a big city. How on earth will we deal with it? We don't know anybody."
I said, "I could call Mayumi."
And I called her, and, as you will see, she is absolutely superb.
Without Mayumi there, Tokyo just wouldn't have worked.
Very bright, lively, funny, and we got on very well.
It wasn't awkward, as it might be between a fan and the person she idolised, I suppose.
I have to say, since we've done the programme, I haven't heard from her at all.
Maybe I was a terrible disappointment but, anyway, if you do see this, Mayumi,
write and tell me if you enjoyed it or not.
The psychic surgery in the Philippines
was one of the more bizarre things I've been involved in filming.
Basically, there are these healers in a certain part of the Philippines,
traditional healers, so, presumably, whatever techniques or skills they have
have been handed down over generations.
So, you know, they're highly regarded
and... people do believe that they can actually...
...um... take out bits of your body without cutting the skin in any way.
And this is what we witnessed.
And we went along and saw...
They were very happy for us to film fairly close...
...his hands working on someone's skin, and a bit of blood appears to come through the skin.
He appears to take some small... organism out.
Nothing very big, but like a sort of bit of tissue and that's then thrown away.
I have to say, the first man we went to, I really didn't believe it.
There was something about him which seemed...
...almost too unlikely that he could do this.
The second man we went to was less of a showman.
Much quieter, more reserved, very, very soft-spoken and intelligent.
He believed this and he showed us what he could do,
and people get up and they feel better and off they go.
I happen to think, on balance, it's probably a hoax,
because I can't see how you can take out some part of someone's body
without there being an incision on the skin.
You can't just do it with your hands.
And I have to say that we never saw any identifiable body part removed.
On the other hand, people must... feel better after it.
People must, in some cases, be healed, or these people wouldn't be in business.
I think this is something we don't understand much about.
In our Western ways, we believe there has to be a rational explanation for everything.
When you travel around the world, in a lot of communities, there just isn't that explanation.
It's all to do with faith and belief.
One of the things that I suppose you could say made this journey different from the others -
or one of the many things - but a particular difference
was that there was an emergency for me to deal with at home.
I tend to just go and, you know, I ring home whenever I can
and, generally, it's me talking on about, "Oh, I've seen a volcano!"
or, "I've been... white-water rafting" or something like that.
And my wife has had to deal with... the plumber,
or the fridge has broken down.
She'll be talking about something fairly basic.
We were in Kuching in Sarawak,
after about four days filming head-hunters upriver...
They're not head-hunters now, but they were Iban people who were head-hunters before.
We got back to Kuching, got back to the hotel, and I was given a message as I checked in...
I remember at the time, we were dirty, sweaty.
We'd been living fairly rough for three or four days. We just all wanted a bath and to crash out.
And there was a message from Helen. It's rare that she rings me.
Usually because it's much easier for me to ring her. She doesn't know where I am.
In this case, a message from Helen,
and also there was a message
for our assistant cameraman, Stephen Robinson.
We all disappeared and I threw my gear down on the floor,
picked up the phone and Helen told me that she'd been diagnosed with a brain tumour.
A benign brain tumour. She kept saying the word "benign".
And I'd never... Well, we'd never had to deal with anything like that before in the family,
and we'd never... I'd never had to deal with it at such a distance.
I suddenly felt completely helpless.
We talked and, fortunately, she had family. Sisters, my children were at home.
Everything was OK. She'd been to the hospital.
The surgeon planned to operate within two or three days.
He'd given instructions for me to ring him at any time and he'd tell me what he was going to do.
There was the tiniest risk, but, basically, it was straightforward brain surgery.
Still, the words "brain surgery" and "tumour" frightened me a lot and I was stunned by that.
I went downstairs...
...and Stephen's call had been because his daughter, who was only a few months old,
had fallen from a first-floor window.
And she, it turns out in the end, hadn't been too badly hurt,
but she'd been quite, you know, knocked about.
So these two double blows had happened out of the blue like that,
and, you know... you feel completely shaken,
'cause your natural instinct is to want to be with your wife or your daughter or whatever,
and yet, obviously, to get home would have been probably two days' travelling.
What helped me was partly 'cause Helen said, "Look, don't rush back.
"You'll get in a terrible panic. I'd rather you waited. I'm being well looked after.
"Come back when it's over and I've had the operation."
Um... and the surgeon who operated on Helen was absolutely brilliant.
I rang him up, as he'd said, two or three times, usually from completely remote places.
And, one time, we were in a place called Yogyakarta in Java.
I rang him up and he said what would happen and it was fine and he talked about it.
He said the operation would be tomorrow.
And I said, "I'm sorry. I've got to go now 'cause we're filming a gamelan orchestra."
I went on to say, "It's a special kind of music." He said, "Gamelan?" and I said, "Yes."
"I'm one of the few people in England who's part of a gamelan orchestra."
By extraordinary coincidence, the surgeon actually played in a gamelan orchestra
in Potters Bar or somewhere like that, so that sort of made me feel closer to him.
And, in the end, both the operations were absolutely fine.
Helen came through it, and Stephen and I went back when we'd finished the filming in Java.
We went back home for about four days, and then flew back out to carry on filming in Australia.
Unfortunately, as soon as I got back home, as often happens,
I'd contracted some cold, probably from the aircraft.
Anyway, I got back home and Helen was virtually nursing me for four days.
She'd had this tumour removed and I'm coughing and spluttering
and sneezing all over the place.
She's never forgotten. She said, "You could have stayed there."
The Pacific Rim, like anywhere else, really, that we've filmed in the world,
does have this contrast between very rich, rich people and poor people,
big cities and tiny villages.
Um... now, I always find that usually the poorer people
are the people who are much more... hospitable and welcoming
and more willing to share with you.
The richer the people you encounter, the more guarded they are, the more careful,
the more likely to ask you where this will go out and will they be shown up?
I remember very much in the Philippines...
It was a small Muslim village on stilts above the water in Zamboanga,
and they had the tin mosque painted.
You know, children going off to school with their bags over their shoulders.
They were living in houses that had no sanitary...
Very basic sort of hygiene. Very basic in terms of electrical supply.
Just a dim lamp. Most of it was just candles and all that.
So they didn't have much, but they had a great strength.
Some of the older villages - like in China - had been unchanged for many years.
Put them beside the big cities in China and these places had no money at all,
yet they were very strong communities.
They've learnt to live together and help each other out,
and that very often happens with the poorest people.
I suppose, in certain areas, I don't know why...
...in Colombia and South America, for instance,
I found the poverty there...
...really... hard to deal with because there was no real comeback from people.
These were people, literally, at the bottom of the pile.
We were filming an emerald mine.
The emerald mine was run by people with guns.
It was a place for thugs and bullies, I think. All right, they were producing these emeralds.
And at the very end,
where the stream with the emeralds ran out into the river, there was a fence.
The poor were allowed up to this fence to see if they could find any residue.
I can just remember seeing people scrabbling in the dirt there,
trying to extract something that would be worth selling,
something that might make them as rich as the people up above.
The contrast between rich and poor was so strong.
If you just had one small emerald,
it would make you richer than these people could ever be.
Somehow the continuity of their lives had been ruptured.
They were there with no hope. The communities had broken down.
Similarly, in Bogotá,
with the quite serious problem with drug addiction there.
There were people there, you know,
who were poor and desperate at the same time.
But I think there is a danger of using words like "the poor" or "poverty"
and you just forget it covers not only...
Over half the world is beneath what we call the poverty line.
The exception is wealth, not poverty.
It covers many different people.
Many of the finest and most inspiring people I've met
have been very poor and managing to bring up their families and survive.
I was pleased to get to Bogotá. I know it has a reputation.
But we'd been in the jungle and on the Amazon for a couple of weeks
and we hadn't had a decent bath or a cold beer for a long, long time.
Suddenly we flew from Leticia,
which is right on the Amazon, in the heart of the jungle.
We flew to Bogotá and found ourselves in a wonderful hotel.
In many ways, Bogotá is a very civilised, modern city with a strong middle class.
They've got bookshops and coffee stalls and all that sort of thing.
So, in one way, I felt fairly comfortable there, but it does have a reputation for gangsterism.
There has been a problem with law and order there for a long time, corruption and all that.
I must say that on occasions I was a little alarmed.
On a Sunday morning, I walked round our local neighbourhood.
I've never seen so many security men and dogs prowling around houses.
Clearly, there's a feeling of paranoia there.
We did deliberately target
the really hard drug-taking area - Calle Cartouche, Bullet Street -
with a journalist from "The Guardian" who'd been there a long time.
We'd not seen anywhere like this nor had we been able to find someone to interpret it for us.
He'd lived in Colombia a long time, knew and liked the Colombians, so he showed us this area.
That was one of the few places where we've had rocks thrown at the car
and, at one point, there was a gunshot heard.
So we got out of there fairly quickly.
Then on the last day, we went to interview Don Fabio, who...
I think he was the father
of two of the biggest sort of gang leaders
and drug barons in... Colombia.
They had a fearsome reputation.
There'd never been anything associated with HIM,
other than two of his children had been in prison for quite long periods.
However, there was a definite feeling, when you go along there, that he's the Godfather.
Just a sort of figure, a rather striking figure.
And, basically, we were just really filming this restaurant of his,
which was sort of dedicated to the equine... equestrian arts.
There were horses everywhere and waiters would come to your tables.
They wouldn't serve you from a horse, but they'd nearly get knocked over.
So you'd eat your meal while horses were going along. People cleared up the droppings.
It was a curious place to be.
Suddenly someone said, "Don Fabio has agreed to be interviewed."
So I was suddenly thrust in there
and I was given a few phrases in Spanish to ask him.
And there he was - the great... this great figure,
this man, this extraordinary sort of powerful, notorious character in Colombia.
There I was bleating out my questions about whatever we asked him.
Anyway, he turned out to be quite charming.
Halfway through, he suddenly said, "Would you like to see me ride my horse?"
People don't often say that in mid-interview.
"Like me to get on a horse?" "Well, stay sitting there." So we said yes.
This had obviously been planned,
but he was a big man and he wasn't well and he couldn't get onto the horse unaided,
so about 20 of his henchmen rush around and hoist him onto the horse.
Here was this great sort of Godfather being lifted on,
and he goes slightly the other side, and someone steadies him.
I thought, this is just so embarrassing, really, that someone should be reduced to this.
He was in his seventies, something like that.
Then, when he was on the horse, everything was fine and he was in control
and he galloped off and that was that.
The "Home And Away" sequence was shot in Sydney.
What a pleasure to shoot. A really lovely day's filming. They were such a nice cast.
They obviously thought it was a great laugh to have somebody like me around,
coming into their programme.
They'd written a part specially for me with the surfboard,
and it was indeed transmitted.
It turned out to be unexpectedly good for my reputation
because my daughter, at that time, was at 0xford University,
and, evidently, "Home and Away" was cult viewing there.
Forget "Panorama". Forget all the serious arts programmes they should have been watching.
"Home And Away" was the big cult programme for Oxford undergraduates then.
And so the fact that I was actually in it,
playing to a packed house in the college bar,
really, I think, added to my reputation.
She said, "Yeah, that wasn't embarrassing, Dad."
Quite rare for my daughter to say that. She thinks most of my career is embarrassing.
There seems to be something...
that goes wrong for us at the end of journeys.
It happened on "Around The World In 80 Days" when we got back to London feeling triumphant.
Within 17 hours of the 80-day limit, we'd got back.
Nobody would speak to us and everyone was generally very disagreeable.
Finally, the Reform Club, where we'd started, wouldn't let us back in again.
They had some function on that day.
And then "Pole To Pole" - we nearly got to the end.
The great climax was going to be this ship across the southern oceans. Suddenly it had no places.
Something seemed to go wrong as we got towards the end.
I felt that, as we made our way up the coast of America, and the last programme,
everything seemed to be going very smoothly, be very easy.
You were in Canada where everything works and the train takes you along,
and the last part of the journey
seemed to be... as easy as it possibly could be.
We'd be taken on an American Coast Guard cutter to the island of Diomede.
Not in a rowing boat, not in a walrus boat like we'd set out on.
This was a... whatever it was - a 12,000-ton, fully equipped American Coast Guard cutter.
And then the weather came down
and... even this ship couldn't get close.
And we had been filming on the coast and got cut off. The weather came down very quickly.
People did say in the Bering Strait the weather can change very quickly, and it did.
We were marooned for a while on the mainland...
...near a place called Wales.
The helicopter from this Coast Guard cutter came and picked us up.
That, I think, was one of the most alarming things
I've ever known on any journey.
This helicopter then had to land back on the cutter,
and the boat was pitching and tossing.
Incredible skill of the helicopter pilot to land it
on the circular disk about sort of - I don't know - 50 feet across or something.
Phew! So that was one thing.
The captain's looked at his radar, his weather pictures and all that, and his GPS, and said
"The weather's getting worse. I can't get you onto Diomede."
I remembered, really, from the first time we'd been there, how sheer those cliff walls are.
Diomede rises like a peak of a mountain out of the middle of the Bering Strait,
so there's not a flat beach or anything like that.
Somehow I felt, "That's the way it is. That's traditional for our programmes."
The end doesn't quite... Something goes wrong at the end.
But, touch wood, we'd been very fortunate at the beginning and the middle.
If something goes wrong at the end, fair enough. We had most of the series there.
Added to that, I think it gave an extra sense of sort of drama to the ending
and showed just how dangerous and difficult the Bering Strait is.
When we first went there, it was millpond calm. That happens very rarely.
So, in the end, what we experienced on this Coast Guard cutter
prevented us from completing the full circle,
but it did show the full anger and wrath of the weather in that part of the world.