Daytime TV star and Ninja Warrior host Ben Shephard has a daredevil streak, but it once led to a visually striking, if ultimately inconsequential, health scare.
He has been known to push the boundaries in other ways, too.
From “flashing his todger” on air to joking about how he had “slept with all the right people” to get to reach his current level of success, he knows the power of a punchy headline.
He suffered a blow recently, however, when ITV announced it was postponing his new reality show show The Summit. Anyway, what was that about him pushing his luck a little too far?
Ben Shephard burst the capillaries around his eyes after New Zealand stunt
If, like Ben Shephard, you have an interest in extreme sports and adventurous pursuits, New Zealand is the place to go.
That is what he says, anyway. He first went there during a year off from university. But this particular story has to do with his latest visit to the faraway country.
I ended up doing four bungee jumps back to back.
“The last time I was there, I had to bungee jump for a television show we were filming,” he told the Telegraph during an interview about his love for travelling.
“My cameraman wanted to film me from loads of different positions, so I ended up doing four bungee jumps back to back.”
Yikes!
“When I got to the hotel that night, I saw that all the capillaries around my eyes had burst from all that pressure. I probably pushed my luck a little bit too far and got carried away, but loved every minute of it.”
He has worked and holidayed all over the world, including Africa and Central America
From hunting for UFOs and the ghost of Guy Fawkes to covering the Haiti earthquake disaster in 2010, Ben Shephard’s work has taken him all over the world.
His favourite hotel is the Oberoi Amarvilas in Agra, India. Not far from the Taj Mahal, Ben said it is the most spectacular place he has ever stayed.
He climbed Mount Kilimanjaro to raise money for Comic Relief, and found the last night of the journey to be one of the most intense of his life. Cold, windy, slow going.
And he once suffered through a particularly bad night in a hostel in Bangkok, convinced someone was going to burst in through the door to his room.
But he doesn’t need to go far for the perfect holiday. He highlights Cornwall, Devon and Scotland as great examples of accessible destinations, and calls a summer in France his most memorable trip abroad.
Catch Ben on Ninja Warrior UK on Sunday (August 10) at 1:05pm on ITV1.
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