Bruce Parry is a proper adventurer. He does impressive, worthwhile journeys that challenge him and add value for the rest of us. He is motivational, but remains down to earth and personable. He has maintained his integrity whilst still undertaking really arduous projects. Even The Sun agrees:
RIGHT. Apart from half a dozen TV presenters, the nation is at breaking point with this word.
So let’s make a few things clear. Contrary to what you may have heard, removing your make-up, for Channel 4’s Gok Wan, is not “a journey“.
Dawn Porter flying to LA so she can hog some camera time with a bunch of wife-swappers is not “a journey“.
And performing cover versions of Boyzone songs, for Dannii Minogue, is not, and never has been, “a journey“.
A journey is one man, and his rucksack, travelling several thousand miles, from the Andes to the Atlantic, via the cocaine gangs of Peru, a game of transvestite football, in the middle of the Brazilian jungle, and a projectile vomiting ceremony with the Achuar tribe of Wijint.
I am, of course, talking about BBC2’s remarkable series Amazon with Bruce Parry, which has been the object of my grovelling attention for these past six weeks.
And if you haven’t been watching, what the hell have you been doing?
It’s the best thing on TV. A bog-standard travelogue, in some ways, as you will probably have seen the pictures and heard the story before.
What sets this series apart, though, is Bruce Parry.
A modern-day TV hero. As David Attenborough is to animals, so Bruce Parry is to people.
He can become anyone’s friend within two minutes (think the opposite of Parky with Meg Ryan).
Tribesmen name their children in his honour and weep when he leaves.
His decency and humanity is overwhelming.
But he also has two other virtues that separate him from the Jamie Oliver tribe.
Firstly, Parry’s an environmentalist and a campaigner, yet he isn’t insufferably smug.
He has “no answers”, never sits in judgment and, half way through the series, almost seemed to grow tired of yet another tribal ceremony where he was made to dress up like Sting and do the Big Bird shuffle. So he went to live with some loggers.
“They were the nicest people I’mve met on my journey for a long time.”
Secondly, it might be exaggerated by the fact he’s followed by a Piers Morgan show, but Bruce Parry has almost no ego.
He’s a man with nothing to prove and, like all truly great presenters, you will watch his show and not learn one private detail about his life.
It can mean the decency and niceness almost get a bit too much, at times, and the vomiting episode was a stupid Bear Grylls-style indulgence. No one, though, should think of Bruce Parry as an empty vessel or soft touch.
He’s an ex-Royal Marine, for goodness sakes, and, at the series close, his passion and anger was obvious.
He’d spent eight months witnessing the death of this forest. Typically, however, he allowed its tribesmen to deliver the show’s message.
“Be firm in our fight for nature, Bruce. Tell the countries outside Brazil we want to keep our beautiful forest.”
It would’ve been a moving full stop to the series, but (I think he’s earned this one) it actually ended with the presenter simply flopping into the Atlantic Ocean declaring: “I’mm knackered.”
Bruce, it’s been a journey.
Good to see support for Brucey but you clearly don’t no the man if you think he has “no ego”. One of the biggest egos around and he’d admit it.
One man and his rucksack… LOL.. you don’t really understand TV either then!
x
Who cares about ego when you have someone doing what it takes. Well done Bruce.