African explorer on TV tonight
 

Tonight on BBC4 @ 10pm, could be good maybe?


http://www.defender2.net/gallery/alb...l_image~53.jpg

I'm enjoying it - he didn't half take some risks though!

did he ever!

great watching

If my memory is correct, Matt Van Dyke (who is the subject of the documentary) used to post on the HUBB about seven or eight years ago when he first did a motorcycle trip around North Africa. I searched for some old posts to attempt to confirm this but wasn't able to find any.

It is certainly an interesting story.

And typically... it clashed on SKY+, so I'll have to watch it on iplayer :thumbup1:

His travel insurance would cover most of it. :innocent:

Risk: it's a funny old 4 letter word.

Thanks for the heads up on this. Will watch it on IPlayer tonight.

Not an African Explorer as the thread title suggests. Virtually nothing to do with motorcycles. A waste of 45 minutes of my life (I gave up before the end). Sh!te all round. Hope the BBC didn't pay much of my license fee for this diatribe.

Strange film.

Admirable though his intentions were, these seem more like a narcissistic "mummies packing me off on an adventure holiday" video diary of a rich boy who even when he tried to shoot someone, missed. Interesting in a kind of voyeuristic way although spending nearly six months in a hole in the ground couldn't have been much fun. He did seem to breeze in and out of it all without it making to much of a dent in his strangely vacuous personality so perhaps when he's had a chance to reflect on it all, it'll make sense to him (and me).

Firstly, the video is available here:

Watch Storyville 2015 S01E10 The Great Arabian Motorcycle Adventures PDTVx264 JIVE watchseries online mp4

OK, it's not really about motorcycling, though Matt obviously made one hell of a trip. His account is candid, honest and an astonishingly personal and ultimately moving piece of war documentary for those that have an interest in the outside world. I wouldn't call his personality 'vacuous' by any means. Given the experiences he went through, I think he is touchingly un-egotistical about them, even if he clearly didn't always make the most sensible decisions. If anyone wants to hate him for having the money to do this kind of thing, well that's not Matt's problem, is it?

I'm not quite sure what an 'African Explorer' is meant to be, but his film, which he took a lot of effort to produce, is far more admirable than some Sunday evening pap like 'The Long Way Down'

Just my opinion...

EO