Ray grills Bear!

[Fuutpad]

I'm loving this debate... Bear is just mindless entertainment not to be taken seriously. He is put into a situation and has to find a way out staged or otherwise. What i found funny was the 30lb chain he was carrying... WHY? Did he pick it up as something that may come in handy for snaring rabbits? It would have been even funnier if he had found a deralict junkyard (memories of the A-team come flooding back). Ray on the other hand is educational, he knows what is has to do and teaches as he goes.
I am guilty of watching and liking both for entertainment value but I also know what to take seriously. at the end of the day it means different things to each of us and we make of it what we will.

[bigzee]

Bear grylls - "he doan arf make oi laarf" (as you west country boys would say). My eight year old girl makes sure we watch him in the correct context: "Daaaaad.........born idiot's on!"

It's quite enjoyable sitting in the comfort of one's living room watching bare girls stressing and grimacing his way around the world, as we point out the error of his every move. He dug up a moist root and hung it on his pack to dry in the sun (to rehydrate later with a knowing wink to camera). He then walked into the middle of the Dakota badlands, where he announced that all water was undrinkable. DOH!

[jonajuna]

all i know is that both of them, in thier individual way have done more to get kids out playing in the big outdoors than just about any other tv "light entertainment" in the last 30 years

why someone who regards himself so highly as Ray Mears does, feels the need to be so derogatory about another person, is beyond me

but then, the more i read and learn about him, the more conceited i believe him to be

but if i have to compare, learning that i can extract water to drink from elephant dung is far more use in a survival situation than watching an hour of someone making a birch bark canoe

on the other hand, i have all of rays books and only one of bears (facing up) but would suggest neither of their book catalogues offer the same level of survival education that lofty's sas survival does

and Myke Hawke is harder than both of them, and your dad :P

[FrenchBen]

Woaw that's amazing!
There are much contradictory points made in here, but I found myself agreeing with almost each one How's that possible? You all guys have some common sense.

My opinion 'bout all this is instead of insulting Bear, Ray had better have reminded the interviewer he and Bear have completely different goals, not doing the same job actually. Well yeah they're both TV presenters. But their relationship to the outdoors is fundamentally divergent.
One is an advocate of bushcraft in its noblest form (melting in nature, kindly using it, loving it actually, learning and developing age-old traditions) while the other is the spokesman of toughest kind of survival : he doesn't intend to learn anyone what you can do out of doors but how far you as a human being may go to survive. Well that's much more entertainment. But I see some educational purposes in Bear's performance too...

My two cents... or two pennies (or shillings? I don't know really... )

[Edwin]

Why shouldn't Mears have given an honest opinion? The "truth is relative" PC guff annoys me. One should give one's honest opinion and that is never insulting. It may be uncomfortable for the recipient but they have to live with it. I don't even think that Grylls is that entertaining, wielding the chain was downright boring.

In regard to that episode, I am sure someone has asked and answered this before but if the viaduct was spanning a valley (which is why one has a viaduct) then why couldn't he have walked up one of the slopes it went to? If getting up was his objective.

[jonajuna]

Giving an opinion about an person while not considering the impact on them is at best thoughtless and at worse highly arrogant.... "only i can be so right, so like it or lump it"

honesty doesn't have to be rude

criticism can be constructive

ray could've spoken in a manner that showed him in a better light

Myke Hawke is still the 'ardest by far

[Edwin]

<Giving an opinion about an person while not considering the impact on them is at best thoughtless and at worse highly arrogant.... "only i can be so right, so like it or lump it">

There is something going about where people are being regarded as delicate flowers with sensibilities that must not be upset. partly lawyer driven where roughty-tufty merchant bankers and even lawyers sue their employers for millions for "constructive" dismissal following "hurtful" remarks. Couple this with the relativism that says that everybody's opinion is of equal weight regardless of evidence or talent and we have the mess we are in now. Book and science critics are being gagged because of the dangers of a lawsuit and psuedo-science is running rampant.

Anf we mustn't foget the cop-out of bad television programmes that "it's only entertainment, a romp" to excuse improbable plots or bad direction.

Fortunately, out in the bush natural selection still works.

[Fletching]

Just to take things back to the actual title of this thread...

Ray would actually grill Bear, probably using a bit of wild garlic and some delightfully aromatic edible tubers, whereas Bear would probably just eat Ray raw. Filthy savage.

[Ben Casey]

Just to take things back to the actual title of this thread...

Ray would actually grill Bear, probably using a bit of wild garlic and some delightfully aromatic edible tubers, whereas Bear would probably just eat Ray raw. Filthy savage.

I had my Bear survivor trousers on yesterday and I survived LOL

[comanighttrain]

I had my Bear survivor trousers on yesterday and I survived LOL

Do they smell of urine when you get them or do you have to do that before wearing them?