For all public appearances and talks, including queries from businesses, event organisers, and awards ceremonies -- please contact:
Amy Chapman amychapmanpr 'at' gmail.com
**************************************************************************************
Simon
Reeve
Award-winning TV adventurer, bestselling author, Inspiring
Speaker
Arrested
by the KGB, chased by cheetahs, hunting with the Bushmen of
the Kalahari…Simon Reeve has lived quite a life.
He’s the leading adventure traveller on British
Television, travelling and filming in 120 countries,
including many of the most beautiful, remote and dangerous
parts of the planet. Simon explores and explains the world
to tens of millions of TV viewers globally, travelling in a
unique way that blends adventure with serious issues.
Simon’s also the New York Times bestselling author of
more than six books. He has received a One World
Broadcasting Trust Award for "an outstanding contribution
to greater world understanding" and the prestigious Ness
Award from the Royal Geographical Society. His 20 TV series
include Caribbean,
Sacred Rivers, Indian Ocean, Tropic of
Cancer,
and Equator.
But Simon started with nothing. After a misspent youth he
left school with no real qualifications and went on the
dole.
Simon changed his life, overcame his fears, and became a
leading investigator, author and TV presenter. Hear
inspiring stories from his travels of people who’ve
overcome adversity, and how talent can be found in the most
unlikely of settings. Simon will pepper his talk with
extraordinary tales from his journeys that will fill your
clients with awe. Whether delivering an After Dinner
Speech, hosting an Awards Ceremony, or appearing in a
Q&A, Simon will encourage and enthuse your clients and
guests, inspiring and motivating the audience.
Subjects Simon can talk about include:
-- overcoming adversity, and how talent can be found in the
most unlikely of settings
-- changing your life and fulfilling your potential
-- team decision-making in Extreme situations
-- An Evening with Simon Reeve
Travel:
-- The Joy of Travel and How to Travel
-- The unexplored world / Travel's new frontiers
-- Can you be an explorer in the 21st century?
-- The Golden Age of Travel (it's now)
please
contact:
Amy Chapman
amychapmanpr 'at' gmail.com
Previous
Clients:
“We’ve
had fantastic feedback from our guests”
“delegates absolutely loved listening and talking to
him and he gave so generously of his
time”
“the
highest rated of all the conference sessions”
“one of the most professional presenters I’ve
ever worked with”
Simon’s
“natural connection with the audience was spot
on”
“the
way he connects with the general public is lovely to
see”
“there
was a great respect for Simon and the programmes he
makes”
“you
had the audience hanging off every word you
said”
“your
professionalism and enthusiasm whilst presenting the awards
kept the energy levels high in the room right until the
very end”
“stories
were delivered in a way that had you laughing one minute
and in awe in the next”
“Simon made the event a great success!”
Simon
is very happy to host awards ceremonies or deliver talks
and After Dinner speeches. Any presentation can be tailored
to meet the needs of your event. Simon also often appears
at events in a Q&A or ‘in conversation
with…’ format, either with an interviewer or
just with an inquisitive audience – no question is
off-limits (!).
We can provide images and film footage to accompany the
appearance, if desired.
please
contact:
Amy Chapman
amychapmanpr 'at' gmail.com
What
others have said...
Michael
Palin, broadcaster and President of the Royal Geographical
Society: “Travelling
multiple times around the world…he has revealed many
special and also difficult, contested and inhospitable
places. With programmes and books that reach out across the
generations he’s a keen and infectious
geographer!”
BBC:
“Simon
Reeve is British television’s most adventurous
traveller”
The
Independent: “TV's
most interesting globetrotter”
Radio
Times: “In
the last decade, he's made a name for himself as British
TV's most adventurous presenter.”
The
Observer: “When
it comes to explaining complex issues in simple terms,
Simon Reeve is an expert…a man whose very name is a
guarantee of interesting television. Outstanding.”
The
Daily Telegraph said:
“like all the best travellers, Reeve carries out his
investigations with infectious relish, and in the
realisation that trying to understand the country
you’re in is not just fascinating, but also hugely
enjoyable.”
The
Sun:
“Simon might just be the best tour guide in the
world”
The
Times:
“Reeve is in a class of his own”.
******************************************************
BIOGRAPHY:
Simon Reeve is an adventurer, TV presenter and New York Times bestselling author with a passion for travel, wildlife, history, current affairs, conservation and the environment. Simon is the presenter of the TV series Indian Ocean and has been around the world three times for the series Equator, Tropic of Capricorn, and Tropic of Cancer. He has travelled extensively in more than 120 countries.
Simon is an ambassador for the nature conservation
organisation WWF, and has been awarded a One World
Broadcasting Trust award for an “outstanding
contribution to greater world understanding”, the
prestigious Ness Award from the Royal Geographical
Society, the Special Contribution Award at the Travel
Media Awards, multiple reader awards for Best and Top
TV series from leading travel magazines, and the John
Tompkins Natural History Award from the International
Moving Image Society, an award “for extraordinary
achievements” in the field of natural wildlife
and history filmmaking. His books, which have been in
the bestseller lists of both The Sunday Times and The
New York Times, include Step by
Step,
Tropic of
Capricorn (published
by BBC Books), and The New Jackals: Ramzi
Yousef, Osama bin Laden and the Future of
Terrorism,
a New York Times bestseller, published in 1998,
which predicted the rise of al Qaeda and a new age
of apocalyptic terrorism. His book
One Day in September:
the story of the 1972 Munich Olympics
massacre is
also an Oscar-winning documentary movie.
Simon is rapidly becoming one of the most widely
travelled people in the country. On his travels
he’s been arrested for spying by the KGB, taught
to fish by the President of Moldova, tracked by
terrorists, electrocuted in a war-zone and protected by
stoned Somali mercenaries. He’s hunted with the
Bushmen of the Kalahari, walked through minefields,
witnessed trench warfare in the Caucasus, struggled
across the country enduring the most violent conflict
on the planet since WW2, and wandered through a
radioactive waste dump while protected by little more
than a shower curtain.
He holds an official Somali diplomatic passport –
bought from a man called Mr Big Beard in Mogadishu, the
most dangerous city in the world. He’s been
surrounded by a pack of hungry cheetahs, adopted by a
tribe of former head-hunters in Borneo, blackmailed and
abandoned by drivers in an Ebola zone, pursued by a
huge amorous camel around a poisoned sea, had his life
saved by Vietnamese sweet wormwood, and eaten some of
the weirdest and most unusual foods available, from
zebu penis soup to grilled squirrel.
Simon has survived malaria, played polo with the corpse
of a headless goat, swum with sea-lions, fished for
piranhas, climbed the equivalent of half-way up Everest
while surviving on coca leaves, travelled around the
planet by van, canoe, car, train, boat, horseback,
helicopter, plane, a 50-metre-long $1m truck, and used
a zip-line to get inside one of the most repressive
states in the world.
Born
and raised in west London, Simon went to a local
comprehensive, where he was an unspectacular student.
After a series of terrible jobs, including working in a
supermarket, a jewellery shop, and a charity shop,
Simon finally found gainful employment as a postboy at
a national newspaper. Still in his teens, he sorted the
mail during the day, and began researching and writing
in his spare time. His 'big break' came when he found
two foreign terrorists on the run in the UK, and he
began conducting investigations for the newspaper into
subjects such as arms-dealing, nuclear smuggling,
terrorism and organised crime. By the age of 19 he was
a staff writer on the newspaper, one of the youngest
ever.
In 1993, Simon began studying the first World Trade
Center attack just hours after the bombing. While
investigating the background and origins of those
responsible for the 1993 terrorist strike, Simon
discovered more terror attacks were being planned by a
disparate group of militants connected to the bombers -
a group now commonly called al Qaeda.
Over the next few years, Simon traced and interviewed
'Afghan Arabs' and close friends and supporters of
Osama bin Laden, along with senior FBI, CIA, and Asian
intelligence officials. Simon had clandestine meetings
with spies and militants in tea houses, car parks and
burger bars, was followed by secret agents from at
least two countries, and worked undercover in disguise
while searching for a former Lebanese arms smuggler.
Traveling across three continents, Simon obtained
classified documents and evidence detailing the
existence, development and aims of the most dangerous
terrorist organisation in modern history.
Simon's research and conclusions formed the basis of
his first book The New Jackals: Ramzi
Yousef, Osama bin Laden and the future of
terrorism.
Published in the UK and USA in the late 1990s it was
the first book in the world on bin Laden and al
Qaeda. The New Jackals warned al Qaeda was planning
huge attacks on the West, and concluded an
apocalyptic terrorist strike by the group was almost
inevitable.
Simon's next book was One Day in September:
the story of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre and
Israeli revenge operation 'Wrath of
God',
published by Faber and Faber. The movie of the same
name, narrated by the actor Michael Douglas, won the
Oscar for best feature documentary.
At the time of the attacks of September 11, 2001,
Simon's book The New Jackals was one of few sources of
information about Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. The
book became a New York Times bestseller, and in the
three months after the 9/11 attacks was one of the top
three bestselling books in the United States. Simon was
repeatedly asked to comment on the new terror threat
and the Western response. He became a regular guest and
contributor to all of the major US and UK TV networks,
including the BBC. In recent years Simon has been
travelling around little-known regions of the world for
a series of television documentaries.
Simon's
younger brother is award-winning photographer James
Reeve, who has won The Independent/Wanderlust/Nikon
Professional Travel Photographer of the Year, the
Observer Hodge Award, the British National Portrait
Gallery Portrait Prize and is a Fifty Crows Foundation
Grant Winner.
Simon
is married to Anya, a television camerawoman and
campaigner who also works as a model. They have one
son.
Buy Simon's latest book here:
TV WORK:
Simon's first TV series was Meet the Stans. In this four part series on Central Asia, broadcast during 2003 and 2004, Simon journeyed from the far north-west of Kazakhstan, by the Russian border, east to the Chinese border, south through Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to the edge of Afghanistan, and west to Uzbekistan and the legendary Silk Road cities of Samarkand and Bukhara.
During Summer 2004 the documentary House of Saud showed Simon traveling around the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, from the cities of Riyadh and Jeddah, to the isolation of the Empty Quarter desert.
For the five-part series Places That Don’t Exist, broadcast in 2005, Simon visited a group of unrecognised nations – countries so obscure they don’t officially exist - including Somaliland, Transdniestria, Nagorno-Karabkh, Taiwan, Adjaria/Ajaria and South Ossetia.
In 2006 Simon travelled around the world for the series Equator, The journey took Simon around the region with both the richest biodiversity, and perhaps the greatest concentration of human suffering. Among the countries visited were Gabon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Kenya, Indonesian Sumatra, Borneo and Sulawesi, the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador, Colombia and Brazil.
In 2007 Simon set-off around the Tropic of Capricorn for a TV series and book. The Capricorn journey started in Namibia, and took Simon through Botswana, South Africa, Mozambique, Madagascar, Western Australia, the Northern Territory, Queensland, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil.
During 2008 and early 2009, Simon and a team of presenters travelled to some of the most exotic and extreme locations on earth for a new TV series called Explore. Explore blends travel with current affairs to get under the skin of some fascinating countries.
Simon spent more than six months travelling around the Tropic of Cancer during 2009 for a TV series shown on BBC2 during spring 2010. The series enthralled millions and was described by The Times as: “a real gem…Reeve is in a class of his own”. Readers of a leading travel magazine voted it their favourite TV series.
During 2011 Simon filmed Indian Ocean, a new journey in which he travels around our third largest ocean for a 6x1hr series broadcast during 2012.
And during 2012 and 2013 Simon filmed Australia, which took him on three journeys around a country the size of a continent.
Simon says his main professional motivation is a fascination with interesting stories, and a basic desire to learn more about issues and subjects that matter, whether that be the emergence of a new terrorist organisation, the personal story of a stateless refugee, or the problems of an apparently obscure country. "Thanks to globalisation, events, issues and problems in far-off countries can have a direct impact on the cozy lives of those of us lucky enough to live in the West," he says. "So why don't we try to find out a little bit more about those issues, and try to resolve them - before they become major problems for all of us?"

Publicity photos: view and download this image at high-resolution
Photo caption: Simon Reeve photographed on his Tropic of Cancer journey while wading across a river in western Burma towards a remote village of the Chin people. Simon's crossing into Chin State was illegal and extremely risky, as Burmese army patrols were a constant threat in one of the most repressive countries in the world. Credit: www.simonreeve.co.uk
Interviews, chats and other stuff with Simon:
BBC Knowledge vid
interview
BBC Human Planet Explorer
interview
The Observer
l
Wanderlust travel mag 1
l
Wanderlust travel mag 2
l
BBC website
My Life in Travel
l
My Week In Media
l
My Life In Media
Sunday Telegraph interview
l
Simon's Travel CV at
Wanderlust
see
the award-winning photography of James Reeve, Simon's
brother,
here.
He's very good.