CHRIS TARRANT: The day I fell asleep in the woods after a vodka bender and was nearly ripped apart and eaten by a huge, very aggressive brown bear
The first time Chris Tarrant was nearly killed by a bear he had a terrible hangover.
'We were fishing for salmon in the wilds of Russia. We drank vodka the night before, then ate vodka jelly,' says the broadcasting legend. 'It's like normal jelly but set in pure Russian vodka. We had a lot of that.'
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Telegraph
6 hours ago
- Telegraph
Chris Tarrant: ‘Phillip Schofield was the most over-exposed man ever'
It's a hot summer's day when I meet Chris Tarrant, and that calls for a drink. As he takes a seat in the plush hotel bar, a waiter comes over and attempts to pour him a glass of iced water. 'Water?' says Tarrant with amusement, as if the server had just proffered a bottle of milk and a Farley's rusk. 'I'll have a beer, thank you very much.' Tarrant has always seemed like a grown-up in the world of broadcasting, even in the custard-pie chaos of Tiswas, the anarchic 1970s children's show. Perhaps it's because he's a physically imposing presence, at 6' 2', or because he started out as a teacher and has a natural authority. He exudes the confidence of a man who has worked in TV and radio for 50 years and made a handsome living from it. Conversing with him is a slightly surreal experience because you recognise every facial expression from his time hosting Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? He's genial company, which isn't always the case – on the way here I read an old interview in which he boiled over at questions posed by a Guardian journalist, who was reduced to asking: 'Am I being a really bad interviewer?' and Tarrant replying bluntly: 'You're not great.' Happily, we're on better terms. For the Love of Bears We're here in the first place to talk about bears, because Tarrant, 78, has written a book about them. His main hobby is fishing, and it was during trips to Russia and Canada that he first saw bears in the wild. His interest grew and he began researching them. He once met a man at West Midlands Safari Park who told Tarrant that he was more wary of bears than any other animals there, including tigers. 'He said, 'Six days a week they let me go up and stroke them, and the seventh day they'd kill me.'' For The Love of Bears is a photo-filled book detailing Tarrant's expeditions to see these magnificent creatures, from coastal brown bears in Alaska to polar bears in the Arctic Circle, including several close encounters. There is one remarkable picture in which a bear ambles past Tarrant as he stands in shallow water in Alaska, barely 10 yards between them. That was on a fishing trip. The title of that chapter is: If A Bear Wants Your Salmon, Let Him Have It. Tarrant's own experiences are interspersed with bear facts and the frequently gory history of human interactions with bears. His first close-up experience occurred during a fishing trip in the extreme north of Russia. He'd enjoyed a drink the night before and decided to have a lie-down on a bed of moss while his companions walked on. He woke up to find a large brown bear staring at him, yet he felt strangely calm. 'Maybe it was the vodka still in my veins. I remember thinking, 'Oh, look, there's a bear.' He looked at me and thought, 'Oh, look, there's a silly little man.' There was no sign of aggression, he just wandered off.' Afterwards, his guide yelled: 'You are a stupid!' at him, which provided the title for another chapter. He thinks now that the fact he was lying down, completely still, probably saved his life. I tell him my theory that everyone has considered what they would do if confronted by a bear – climb a tree, play dead, try to scare it off – despite the minimal chance of us ever encountering one. We put it to the test when the photographer turns up and, sure enough, Geoff has a bear escape plan (he favours making himself look bigger by waving his arms in the air and roaring). Tarrant says there is only one absolute rule: 'Whatever you do, don't run. Because even if they don't mean you any harm, that will spook them. This other thing about climbing a tree? Well, you've got a bloody bear chasing you. You've got seconds. You have to have a tree there, it's got to have all the branches in the right place, and you've got to get 13 feet up because most of them can reach up to 12 feet. And have you climbed a tree since you were 10?' 'Just about every job in television' Tarrant would happily talk about bears all afternoon, but I'm keen also to ask him about how the landscape of TV has changed. When he was honoured for his outstanding contribution at the National Television Awards in 2000, host Sir Trevor McDonald described him as a man who had taken on just about every job in television. In the 1970s, he was a news reporter at ATV in the Midlands, then switched to presenting and producing Tiswas. He brought zany energy to the Capital Radio breakfast show from 1987 to 2004 – the DJ Chris Evans has cited him as an inspiration – and formed a double act with Roland Rat on TV-am. His career reached a peak as the host of Millionaire from its inception in 1998 until 2014, with presenters in 120 other countries copying his catchphrases. Apart from a brief stint at the BBC – so brief he claims not to remember the show he worked on – and a series about railways for Channel 5, Tarrant was an ITV man. But now he thinks the channel is being ruined by adverts. 'We always used to say, 'See you in a couple of minutes,' but how long are the breaks now? Five or six minutes! I watch Netflix and Amazon Prime. Then I turn on an ITV drama and say, 'What? It's only been on three minutes and we've got a break!' And the sponsors and all that. When will it happen that the commercials are longer than the programme?' So he sticks mostly to Netflix, Sky Sports and news bulletins. I ask if he thinks the BBC licence fee is sustainable, and he says that no, it should compete in the marketplace, but he doesn't want to be drawn into the argument. 'It's the last of my worries. I don't think, as I wander about my Bucklebury estate, 'What about the BBC licence fee?'' he jokes. His earnings at Capital and on Millionaire – he was rumoured to be earning £4 million a year at his peak – bought him the lovely house in Berkshire (as a near neighbour of the Middletons), which he shares with Jane Bird, his partner of 20 years. 'I worked like a dog. I'd crawl in at five in the morning to do radio, then at 11am I'd go to Elstree and do Millionaire.' 'Phone a friend' People still shout 'We don't want to give you that' at him in the street, and quip about 'phoning a friend', but the show that inspires the most affection is Tiswas. The show, three hours of live mayhem involving celebrities being covered in gunge and parents being drenched by buckets of water, drew audiences of five million, many of them adults. Co-hosted by Sally James and Lenny Henry, it changed the face of children's TV. Tarrant was driven by the desire to make the show as unlike Blue Peter as possible, with a studio full of kids. Before moving into TV he had spent a year post-university teaching in a tough secondary school in New Cross, south-east London, which stood him in good stead. Was there a real rivalry between him on Tiswas and Noel Edmonds on the BBC's competitor, Multi-Coloured Swap Shop? 'No. There was no contest,' he scoffs. Tarrant writes in his memoir that Swap Shop was a 'drab little Saturday morning offering hosted by Noel Edmonds with his division-four footballers' haircut.' I remind him of that. 'He's still got it as well!' he says of Edmonds' gravity-defying barnet. 'Oh, I'm not going to get involved in Noel. He's resurfaced in New Zealand. I don't quite know what he's done. He's been through several crises. The daftest thing Noel did, when he was dumped from the BBC because those shows were tired, he just wrote abusive letters to the papers slagging off everybody at the BBC except himself. And I thought, Noel, you just don't do that, mate. It's all very well, but you'll never work again.' Schofield, Clarkson and Capital Talk of Edmonds' new comeback show, documenting his lifestyle on New Zealand's South Island, leads us on to Phillip Schofield, who attempted to revive his own career last year by marooning himself on a desert island in Castaway. Tarrant snorts. 'There was not a hint of apology or 'maybe I was a little bit out of order'. Christ Almighty.' He thinks Schofield 'lost the plot' after fame went to his head. 'He was the most over-exposed man ever, maybe apart from [Terry] Wogan at his peak. But Terry was on all the time because he was very good, and funny and likeable, and bright as a button. I loved him. Schofield, they always said, 'Oh, but he's a safe pair of hands.' Did anyone ever say, 'Ooh, it's five to eight, got to get home quick because the safe pair of hands is on?' Dear oh dear. Those shows he did – Dancing On Ice, The Cube, everything – were mainly c--p.' Tarrant thinks that radio people 'are much nicer generally' than TV stars. 'You can get away with stuff on telly when people think you're a wonderful human being because you do 13 weeks a year, you put on your suit and go into this smarmy smile mode. There are people who are not very nice on television who get away with it because they do the image for an hour then go back and scream at everybody in the dressing room. And I do know one or two of them.' Although, now he thinks about it, not everyone on the airwaves is genuine. 'I won't tell you who, but two very high profile presenters on the radio absolutely hate each other. It's a very good, very warm, very bubbly morning show and they do not speak to each other at all while the records are on. Literally. And then it's all, 'Welcome back, ha-ha, hee-hee, ho-ho, it's five past seven.'' The Capital breakfast show was his favourite job, and he remains good friends with members of the team. He has moved on from Millionaire, which he left in 2014 after 15 years. Does he watch it now that Jeremy Clarkson has taken over presenting duties? He stares at me as if I've just fluffed the £100 starter question. 'I never watched it. I've only ever seen two.' But surely he's curious about how Clarkson is doing it? 'No! I haven't watched Clarkson. I know Jeremy, I've known him for years. But I just don't watch game shows.' Not even once, for 10 minutes, in the seven years it's been on? 'No,' he says, as firmly as he says anything during our conversation. 'Why would I? Because I know it so well. And we did have the best of it, the glory days.' Bad press Another thing he doesn't miss is the unions, who wielded enormous power in broadcasting during the 1970s and 1980s. 'I remember going to interview Elton John, who had taken the whole of the Inn on the Park on Park Lane. It was July, really hot, and we had this fantastic lunch with cuts of salmon and all that, loads of champagne. Elton was lovely. And when we got back, unbeknownst to me, they all put in for a broken meal break because we hadn't supplied a hot meal. What? You've just had the best meal of your bloody life!' The people he most enjoyed working for were strong characters who were happy to throw away the rule book. Greg Dyke, who hired him for TV-am and cracked down on the union business, was one. Janet Street-Porter was another. 'I did a year at the BBC with Janet as my boss and she was fantastic. Best boss ever. She was wonderful, so foul-mouthed.' Either Tarrant doesn't hold a grudge, or he didn't read the newspaper column in which Street-Porter delivered a characteristically straight-talking assessment of Tarrant after he confessed to cheating on his second wife, Ingrid, in 2006: 'He's a self-deluded bloke who shagged another woman and was surprised when his wife hired a private detective to find the evidence.' The divorce from Ingrid after a 15-year marriage played out in the tabloids. Tarrant's other bout of bad press occurred in 1999 when a former Capital colleague, Kara Noble, sold a picture to The Sun of Tarrant pulling up the top of the station's PR girl, Sophie Rhys-Jones, to reveal her breasts. It was weeks before Sophie's wedding to Prince Edward. But most of the opprobrium was heaped on The Sun, which was forced to make an apology for printing it, and on Noble for going so low. The public accepted that Tarrant was messing around, and Buckingham Palace never briefed against him. He has said previously that it was a 'pretty stupid' thing to do but that he and the Duchess were simply 'having a giggle'. It's all ancient news now, but left Tarrant with a wariness around journalists. 'I've met Phil Collins a few times and he hates all journalists with a passion. I said to him once, 'Do you remember the names of all the journalists that have stitched you up?' And he said, 'Every single one.' I said, 'I do that. Not every one, but the real bastards.' Enjoying retirement Tarrant doesn't do many interviews now because he retired from TV last year. During the pandemic, 'I thought, I'm actually quite enjoying this life. And now I love it. I still do the odd corporate earner but I wouldn't go back to telly. I spent 50 years of my life in radio or television studios. I've just done so much, I'm sick of the sight of myself. 'Do you know, my dad retired after a long time working hard [Basil Tarrant was a decorated war hero who became a senior executive for the Huntley & Palmer biscuit company] and his mate said to me: 'Keep an eye on your dad because he's always been so busy, he might have a hard time.' Well, Dad lived for another 21 years and he loved it.' Tarrant keeps busy with projects, such as this book, but also goes on lots of holidays, such as taking his two youngest granddaughters on safari. There is a glorious freedom in being able to travel without planning around work schedules, he says. 'I'll tell you the sort of thing. This winter, after Christmas, we went on holiday to the Caribbean for five or six weeks. We got home about mid-February and it was b----y freezing. It went on and on, so I was like, 'F--- this, let's go back again.'' And they did. 'That's called enjoying retirement.' He has six children, including two step-children (his son, Toby, is a DJ for Radio X, while his daughter, Fia, hosts a breakfast show on Heart), and six grandchildren aged three to 13. He is also godfather to a little Ukrainian girl, aged nearly four, whom he took in as a refugee with her mother and grandmother at the start of the war. They lived at his property for a year before he found them a flat in nearby Newbury where they could be nearer to amenities. 'They've enhanced our life. We love them,' he says. The husband is fighting in the Donbas. The family were initially fearful of everything. 'Where I live, there's a little local airport so you get a lot of small planes going over. And they were running indoors – 'It's the Russians!' – and I was saying, 'It's not the Russians, it's just some bloke with a Tiger Moth.' But they were terrified. They just want to go home, but they want to go home and find everything like it was. They won't.' Twelve years ago, he had a mini-stroke during a flight from Bangkok to Heathrow. 'When I'd finally done my physio and all that, I went back to see the specialist and he said, 'You're very lucky, you could have been in a wheelchair.' I asked him what he thought had caused it, and he said, 'Excess.' I said, 'How do you mean?' And he said, 'Excess, excess, excess.' Ah, that'll be the excess then, will it?' He stopped drinking whisky. 'I used to drink a lot of whisky. I haven't had a single drop since I keeled over. And Jane's quite good at keeping me eating healthily. But I can't be vegetarian and all that stuff.' I enquire whether he now has an exercise regime. 'This is it now, talking to you, with a car outside to take me home,' he laughs. 'I'll walk from the car to my front door, and then I shall probably open the bar and turn on Netflix. And, obviously, open my copy of The Telegraph and do the crossword.' Sounds perfect, I say. 'Yeah,' he grins, and never has a man looked so content with the lifestyle he's earned.
The National
7 hours ago
- The National
Artists held to account for taking Moscow's cash to perform
Baklanova, along with most other people in the city, wasn't in the habit of going to air raid shelters for the first couple of years of the full-scale invasion, but that's changed given the intensification of attacks lately. 'It's also because the Russians have shitty, imprecise weapons, and I live very close to an old Soviet defence industry factory in central Kyiv, which they shell almost every time they hit our city. I know one of their missiles could easily miss the factory and hit my house. It's been very rough since things intensified, and Bella is on antidepressants because of it.' A stalwart of the Kyiv electronic music and cultural scenes, Baklanova's roles have included communication and co-curation at Cxema, a Ukrainian independent cultural organisation and the biggest rave party in Eastern Europe, leading communications for Kyiv's K41 cultural hub, contributing to online and offline music and social activities including the Tight platform for contemporary music and visual art, and the LUST queer party series. She has also written for prestigious publications including Resident Advisor, Year Zero, Highsnobiety, Mixmag, The Wire, DTF Magazine and United24 Media. READ MORE: 'Completely unprecedented': BBC cuts live feed for Kneecap Glastonbury performance Soon after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, she decided to start using her platform in the music industry to expose the dubious morals of two sections of the electronic music community: artists, most but not all of them from Europe and North America, who continue to accept bookings from Russian clubs and festivals, and Russian artists – most notably the Siberian techno superstar Nina Kraviz – who support the Putin regime, either openly or tacitly by remaining silent about its crimes. Baklanova does this through social media, creating posts that list the artist and the event in Russia that they have agreed to play at, with the artists in question tagged. She has also been working on a website for some time that should be launched soon, on which it will be possible for promoters, agents or anyone else in the music industry to search artists' names and see if they have accepted Russian money. There are two main cohorts of Western artist willing to accept bookings in Russia these days – ones who actively support the Putin regime and its war in Ukraine, and ones dazzled by the high fees currently offered to foreign artists by Russian events, and too ignorant of the situation to realise why they should refuse. The first group are heavily outnumbered by the second, Baklanova says. A prominent example of the first is the New York artist Ron Morelli, the head of L.I.E.S. Records, one of the most influential and respected electronic music labels of the 2010s, and still a force in this decade too. He gave no outward signs of the direction in which his mind was drifting until last summer when he appeared on a podcast with heavy Maga sympathies and let loose a hurricane of far-right, anti-immigrant, misogynist bile, and fawning praise for Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. Morelli is on the bill for July's Outline Festival in Moscow – and is presumably very much looking forward to the experience. 'There are some people like Morelli, but the main reason people play there now is money,' Baklanova says. 'I have a friend who is an established artist in the European scene who was recently invited to play at Signal Festival near Moscow, and the proposed fee was €5000. In Europe, you get paid that sort of fee if you're a superstar, or if not a superstar then something not far below that. 'They're offering that kind of money to artists who'll play for €300 in Berlin, so the motivation is pretty clear. It's attractive for people who don't care about politics to go and play and cover their bills for the next year. And when we highlight this and criticise them for it, they start coming out with all this 'philosophical' stuff about how they're doing it to go and support the oppressed people of Russia. We've found that they'll say almost anything to avoid looking like what they are: greedy and ignorant.' Even cursory knowledge of how the Russian government has treated its indigenous music scene since the invasion gives the lie to this straw-man argument. 'They oppressed and oppressed the existing scene there step by step and started to control it fully pretty soon after the full invasion,' Baklanova says. 'Now in Moscow, there's a huge new club which has opened with the support of Moscow's mayor and is booking foreign artists for huge fees using money from who knows where. There is no independent, underground culture in Russia now, and if there is, it is deeply underground and secret, and those running it wouldn't have the money or the ability to invite artists from the West to play.' Any artist accepting a booking from a Russian club or festival now is, therefore, automatically lending their support to the culture-washing efforts of the Putin regime. There's no attempt to hide that fact either – reportage from last year's Outline was broadcast on the Russia-1 state propaganda TV channel. Baklanova posted the footage to her Instagram account. In it, the reporter boasts that 'despite the sanctions, the festival welcomes artists from the USA, Germany, France, Italy, Portugal and Switzerland'. As Baklanova asked the artists involved in the caption of her post, 'Do you feel like you've been used?' So what is her message to any artist who might be considering taking a gig in Russia? Baklanova's answer could just as easily apply to Europeans and North Americans who have grown weary of hearing about the Ukraine war, or are even turning against the idea of continuing to support Ukraine. 'My message is to discover more,' she says. 'Watch more documentaries about Russia and Russia's intentions in this war and other wars. Be realistic and recognise that it's a matter of time before Russia attacks Europe, that you are not safe there and that it's better to listen to people who are going through this war. (Image: Supplied) 'Also, the first and second years of the war were totally different to this year – people in Ukraine are exhausted, they have PTSD, and many of us have died. It affects everyone – one of my best friends died on the frontline at the end of May, and honestly I cannot connect these two worlds, the world where my best friends die defending Europe and the world where other Europeans are going and playing for the Russian occupants. 'So my message is to be more empathetic and realistic, and to make sure you keep your eyes on what is happening in Europe as well as what's happening in the Middle East, and keep remembering how cruel this war is.' Baklanova's friend who died recently was a tattoo artist named Roma Sova who Baklanova worked with at K41, where he was part of the security team. He joined the army at the beginning of the full-scale invasion – one of many prominent people from Kyiv's creative scene who have fought and often died on the frontlines while people from parallel scenes in Moscow and St Petersburg carry on with their lives and book Western artists to play their clubs and festivals. Roma featured prominently in videos from the frontlines over the past three years, and he was honoured with a banner after his death by fans of the famously politically engaged German football club St Pauli. 'He is a hero and he died a hero, for all of us,' Baklanova says. 'His sacrifice, and the sacrifices of thousands of others who stood up against this evil, shouldn't be ignored. 'Europeans and Americans shouldn't be carrying on happily with Putin-supporting Russians during this genocide while Russia continues doing business as usual, as if they haven't destroyed millions of lives.'
Daily Record
15 hours ago
- Daily Record
Models lured to sick 'Porta-Potty' Dubai parties by men lavishing them with gifts
Dubai is known for its glitzy lifestyle that draws hundreds of social media influencers and reality TV stars - but inside, there's a dark secret that has sparked concern for the welfare of women travelling to the popular tourism hotspot. Models have been lured to sick 'Porta-Potty' parties by men lavishing them with gifts as we look at inside Dubai's dark underbelly. These twisted gatherings - reportedly organised by wealthy men - lure young models and influencers with promises of tens of thousands of pounds, luxury gifts, and lavish hotel stays, reports the Mirror. But behind the glitz lies a horrifying truth, including acts of extreme sexual degradation, physical abuse, and potential legal peril for the women involved. An influencer sparked concern on TikTok after sharing extravagant gifts bought for her by a stranger she met at the gym on Wednesday. Jade, who goes by @outplayedbyjade online, is originally from France but travelled to Dubai as she documented her trip online. In her video, she explained how she had been leaving the gym when workers approached her with a gift from someone she had met on the treadmill. "I didn't think much of it," she explained in the video. A worker handed her a bouquet of flowers and chocolate from the man she had struck up a conversation with. Flattered, she texted the number he had left with the gift to thank him, after which she then received a call from a shop assistant at the luxury jewellery designer store Van Cleef & Arpels. "I'm a very curious girl, so I make my way over to the shop," she explained. "This assistant pulls out a beautiful bracelet and a matching necklace." All together, the gifts were worth around £3,000. And while Jade was over the moon with her gifts, fans were quick to warn the influencer that he was a "professional" and to "be careful" amid reports of men recruiting women for " Porta-Parties" in Dubai. There was no information to confirm the intentions of the man spoiling Jade. Maria Kovalchuk, a 20-year-old Ukrainian adult model, who was reportedly left for dead after attending one of the Porta-Potty parties. Maria vanished after telling her mother she'd been invited to stay overnight with two men claiming to be modelling agents. She never made her flight to Thailand. Ten days later, on March 19, she was found dumped at the roadside in Dubai, suffering from a shattered spine, broken limbs, and severe internal injuries. Maria has undergone multiple surgeries, and her family, now at her bedside, are desperate for answers. It's thought she is still recovering from her injuries. Dubai Police confirmed that Maria is receiving medical care, but claimed she 'entered a restricted construction site alone and fell from a height'. A statement many find hard to accept, given the disturbing rumours swirling around her disappearance. Russian lawyer Katya Gordon, who has followed the case closely, bluntly alleged: "Model Maria Kovalchuk was found dying on the side of the road in the UAE after a party. The scandal with the Porta Potty parties has been raging for over a year." Gordon and others allege that Maria may have been forced to take part in a sex act involving human faeces - a central theme of these "Porta-Potty" events, where humiliation and abuse are part of the package. These parties reportedly involve women being paid vast sums of money to perform grotesque acts involving bodily fluids, degradation and pain. Viral videos have helped expose this shadowy world, but the abuse is largely hidden by Dubai's shiny reputation and strict censorship laws. And the women involved in these parties could even find themselves prosecuted. Radha Stirling, CEO of Detained in Dubai, has warned that women involved in these parties - even against their will - could face charges of adultery or indecency, especially if married men are present. "Sex outside marriage has been legalised in Dubai, but organisers have exploited this. Women think they're attending a private party - instead, they're thrown into horrific, dangerous situations with real legal risk," Stirling said. Maria's mother told Ukrainian media: "She has no documents, no phone, nothing. She's had three operations. She can't speak. We were told she went to a party, but the promoter claims he never saw her. We're terrified of what really happened." If you've been the victim of sexual assault, you can access help and resources via or by calling the national telephone helpline on 0808 802 9999 Join the Daily Record WhatsApp community! Get the latest news sent straight to your messages by joining our WhatsApp community today. You'll receive daily updates on breaking news as well as the top headlines across Scotland. No one will be able to see who is signed up and no one can send messages except the Daily Record team. All you have to do is click here if you're on mobile, select 'Join Community' and you're in! If you're on a desktop, simply scan the QR code above with your phone and click 'Join Community'. We also treat our community members to special offers, promotions, and adverts from us and our partners. If you don't like our community, you can check out any time you like. To leave our community click on the name at the top of your screen and choose 'exit group'.
