Ben Fogle
Ben Fogle was born in 1973, the son of actress Julia Foster and broadcast vet Bruce Fogle. Educated at Bryanston School in Dorset, Ben went on to study Latin American Studies at the University of Costa Rica and University of Portsmouth, where he enrolled as an Officer in the Royal Naval Reserve, as a Midshipman.
Ben spent several years in Latin America, working on a turtle conservation project on the Mosquito coast of Honduras and working in an orphanage in Ecuador.
In 2000 Ben volunteered to be marooned on Taransay, a remote windswept island in the Outer Hebrides as part of the BBC's big millennium project, Castaway 2000. He has since presented numerous programmes including the BBC's Animal Park, Countryfile, Wild in Africa, One Man and His Dog, Holiday and Cash in the Attic. His adventure series for the BBC - Extreme Dreams - was hugely successful and is now in its second series. He is also a regular presenter of Crufts. Other TV appearances have included Panorama, Richard and Judy, Graham Norton, Paul O'Grady, This Week, The Wright Stuff, The Kumars at No 42, A Question of Sport and Never Mind the Buzzcocks.
Ben has travelled extensively in South and Central America and is fluent in Spanish. He has toured the world for various broadcasting assignments, visiting amongst other places Tristan da Cunha, Pitcairn, St Helena, East Timor, Nepal, Namibia, Kenya, the Arctic Circle, Zambia, Papua New Guinea, Uganda, Libya, Sri Lanka, Fiji, Tahiti, the Maldives, Tanzania and Morocco.
Ben has published three books, The Teatime Islands, Journeys to Britain's Faraway Outposts; Offshore, In search of an Island of my Own; and The Crossing – Conquering the Atlantic in the World's Toughest Rowing Race, co-written with James Cracknell. He has also written for The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, the Sun, Country Life, Glamour Magazine, the Daily Mail, the Evening Standard, the New York Times and others.
Ben's sporting achievements have included beating actor Sid Owen in a three-round charity boxing match for BBC Sport Relief. For WWF he completed the Marathon Des Sables, a 160-mile, six day, self sufficient race across the Sahara Desert. He has completed the Safaricom Marathon in Kenya for the TUSK Trust, and more recently rowed across the Atlantic Ocean with Double Olympic oarsman, James Cracknell, in 49 days, setting the British pairs record. Ben and his wife Marina recently set the world record for sailing from Portsmouth to Cork in the Big V sailing race in just 49 hours.
Ben has won a Royal Television Society (RTS) award for the highly acclaimed Through Hell and High Water, and has been nominated as TV personality of the year and as best new talent. His first book, The Teatime Islands, was short-listed for the WH Smith People's Award for Best Travel book. He has also been awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from the University of Portsmouth, is a Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society, and an ambassador for WWF and for Tusk. He is a keen supporter of the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme and Hearing Dogs for Deaf People, and President of the Council for National Parks.
Ben married Marina in September 2006 after meeting her in the park where both were walking their dogs. Marina runs her own events company. Inca, Ben's beloved black Labrador, has also made many television appearances with Ben.