The Charley Boorman Show
by Sean Bell © The Herald
Boorman is on the go. “I’ve just opened up a new workshop,” he says. “Great fun. In time, it’ll become a shop, but right now I’m just building a few custom motorcycles for people who want them – modern bikes, made up to look like old 70s and 80s flatpackers. It’s pretty cool.”
This is the kind of oil-stained man-boy’s hobby that fits well with most preconceived notions of Boorman, built up over the half-decade his various transcontinental expeditions have been documented for television. When Boorman, the son of Deliverance director John Boorman, embarked on the Long Way Round in 2004 (his motorcycle trip from London to New York via Europe and Asia) it’s probably fair to say most people identified him as “the one that wasn’t Ewan McGregor”.
However, long since the success of that series and the accompanying book and DVD, Boorman has grown as a character in the public consciousness: the friendly, hirsute daredevil and occasional actor who thinks nothing of jauntily nipping off on the kind of epic cross-country quests that, a few generations earlier, would have given his wife reason to dig out a black dress and look fearfully at the skyline.
Boorman has competed in the annual Dakar Rally, travelled from John O’Groats to Capetown, County Wicklow to Sydney, and from Tokyo via the Pacific Rim. His travelling roadshow rolls into Glasgow on February 24 as part of a live tour that marks the end of Right To The Edge, the Pacific Rim venture which is soon to form the basis of a television series. “Since doing the first few talks, which were very popular, the idea was to expand that and make a roadshow,” he says.
“We’re going to have all the motorbikes I’ve used over the years on the stage, we’ll have ¬[Boorman’s 2006 Dakar Rally collaborator] Simon Pavey as a guest speaker and video clips and so on. I’m sure Simon will come up with something I’ve forgotten and try to embarrass me as much as he can, but he’s entitled. Simon and I had a massive adventure together on the Dakar Rally – it’s one of the most dangerous races in the world. The experience of getting ready for that, and then doing it was one adventure after another – the biggest of which was trying to get out of the desert with two broken hands. So yeah, a lot went on.”
And how long does it take for those kind of experiences to become something you laugh about? “I would say about five minutes after you’ve got away with it,” says Boorman. “For example, in Papa New Guinea, we were trying to get across this very swollen river. We were in this old 1965 flatbed truck which really should have been skipped, surrounded by people on all sides. And then those people started getting drunk, machetes started coming out, and they turned on us.”
“I remember picking up a rock and thinking, ‘Oh shit, here we go ...’ At the time, all I could think about was getting out of there, and when we eventually managed to slip off and were about five minutes down the road, I turned around to look at the cameraman and we just burst out laughing. Thank Christ we got away with that. Another one of the nine lives used.”
Boorman has several stories like this – as he points out, for every harrowing incident portrayed on his television shows, there are usually a couple that remain on the cutting-room floor.
“I think one of the big things that has changed for me since starting all this is I notice how much negativity there is around the world about certain countries. If you say to people, ‘I’m off to Papa New Guinea’, you’ll often get a bad reaction – usually from people who’ve never been there. There’s this fear of the unknown. And 99% of the time, you end up surprised – it rekindles your faith in humanity. The people are always just people; they want their kids to go to school, they want food on the table. There’s just a tiny minority who are f***ing it up for everyone else. You get yourself into some scrapes, but it’s never all that bad. I mean, if the country’s in the middle of a war of something,” he says laughing, “I probably wouldn’t go.”
Boorman is no evangelist for his hobby-horse, but is quick to point out the rather numbing alternative. “We all live in a very tranquil, sanitised world where you’re told to do everything, and when you travel, it’s very liberating not to be in that crazy, nannied state. You feel you can stretch out and be adventurous. But if you check out the government websites about safe travel …” He gives a sigh of exasperation, before continuing. “They would much rather have you sitting at home in your pipe and slippers – put it like that.”
But it’s hard to shake the feeling that the age of jet-setting is over, or that Boorman’s brand of globetrotting is reserved for the rich and environmentally feckless. For someone rarely pictured not astride something with an ¬internal combustion engine, Boorman has his environmental answers at the ready. “You’re aware of your carbon footprint,” he says. “A lot of the time, the trips we do utilise transport that was already in place, so the impact is relatively low. And motorbikes are pretty fuel-efficient these days. Also, a lot of the work we do is worthwhile, like our work with UNICEF highlighting the problems children have around the world and what people can do to help. It’s done in a non-chucking-it-down-your-throat way.”
Unavoidably, Boorman’s overseas projects keep him away from his family, who remain safely ensconced back in the UK. “Luckily we have modern technology these days and we can make phone calls and communicate by internet,” he says. “But yeah, it’s tough when you’re away for three or four months at a time. You miss all those things like the kids’ theatre plays and open days at school and the odd birthday ... When you go to these UNICEF projects it really makes you value your family and miss them. But I think they’re used to me being away. I’ve always travelled, always been an actor, always been doing things like this.
“As my daughter said when she called me, ‘Ah daddy, it’s amazing how tidy the house is when you’re not here.’ I’m sure they’re quite grateful when I eventually bugger off.”
What have been the biggest extremes for Charley Boorman during his travels? “It’s very difficult to say what experience was the hardest,” he says. “Long Way Round was the first one, so we didn’t know anything. From there, we went straight into the Dakar Rally, which is only 16 days long but felt like a year. That threw up a bunch of new difficulties. And Africa presents its own set of problems. There were slap-in-the-face moments, and moments that took my breath away. But I do remember pulling up on my motorbike next to Ewan while we were looking for a camp site in Tanzania, and the sun was just starting to go blood-red as this herd of elephants came out of the bush and crossed the road.”
Boorman pauses, before saying quite seriously, “We were privileged to be there”.