Ben Fogle would love to escape to remote island and live in the wild

Ben Fogle has just announced his new career move as he hopes to make a documentary movie about a woman who claims to be raised by apes. But in the past, the adventurer has made no secret of his desire to live on a remote place in the wild.

Ben Fogle: New Lives in the Wild sees the TV personality jet all around the world to meet free-spirited people who are living off-grid, away from the trappings of normal life and social media. The Channel 5 reality series has been on air since 2013 where Fogle meets with fearless individuals or couples or families who have decided to take their life in a different direction to the rest of the world.

As an avid adventurer himself, Fogle fully immerses himself in their lives when he goes to visit them for a week or so and lives how they do in the wild. Essentially it is a way the star can "vicariously" live through them. Only last week on Good Morning Britain, Fogle admitted going to live in the wild is something he would love to do.

He told Susanna Reid and Ben Shepherd: "For years and years I've said this is how I would love to live. But we all make concessions in life." However, his young family have their friends and love their lives in rural Buckinghamshire - plus he loves it too.

Fogle further explained: "I love my lifestyle in rural Buckinghamshire with my family I love. They've got their friends, they have got their life. I am happy to go off and live vicariously through other people but I love the idea of doing it."

While he may not live in the wild, his fearless spirit has seen him complete many adventures over the years from climbing Mount Everest to rowing across the Atlantic and crossing the deserts of the Empty Quarter in the Middle East. His TV work also has always had a sense of adventure.

When he's not working on TV or on his own personal adventures with his family, Fogle has settled down in rural Buckinghamshire with his wife Marina and their children: Ludo and Iona. The couple were married in 2006 after their lives changed forever when they met by chance walking their dogs in Hyde Park.

Castaway

Of course, Fogle was propelled into the public eye when he starred on reality series Castaway where he was marooned on a Scottish island with others and cut off from the real world for a year. In a recent interview with The Telegraph, the star hailed it as the best decision he ever made.

Though it has changed his life in ways he never imagined, Fogle admitted that at the time people were surprised he gave up his job at Tatler in 1999. He told the publication: "No one could understand why I'd be giving up a good job and central London, and giving up all my friends, for a year. It changed my life, it is where I became an environmentalist."

Ben Fogle on living in the wild

Many times over the years Fogle has expressed his desires to live in the wild. In fact, Fogle said in 2021 that he was sure he would be living out in the woods if he didn't have a family. "If I didn’t have a family, I think I would be off," he told The Telegraph.

He added: "Having grown a massive beard, living an eccentric life in a little cabin in some faraway woods, probably up in Sweden or Norway. Without doubt I get a pang of jealousy when I see how people can live without the complications we create in our own lives, living the Western, materialistic lives that we do."

In 2019, Fogle confessed he could be "tempted" to finally make the move and live on a remote island following the fallout of Brexit. He told Press Association at the time: "This idea that we can dictate and we can direct our own lives is becoming more appealing. I think what Brexit and the whole political situation right now has shown up, is this power that is in other people’s hands. What happens with the Brexit fallout will affect all of us financially, politically, socially.

"And this idea that, actually, if you’re in the wilderness living in a tiny little structure you have built yourself, you make your own rules, you make your own destiny, and you’re your own boss." Asked if more people would escape normal lives after Brexit, he responded: "I really wouldn’t be surprised. I’m tempted. That’s part of the inspiration for our plans as a family, to head off and live on an island."

Ben Fogle's retirement plans

Even though Fogle hasn't given up normality just yet, the idea of living on a remote island still remains a possibility in his own mind. The TV star previously spoke from the heart about his desires to retire in a little cabin on an island somewhere with his wife.

Speaking of his hopes and dreams for the future, he said he would love for his grandchildren and children to be able to visit him and his wife if they went to live on a secluded island. He told The Mirror in 2022: "I think we all have our retirement mapped out. For some people it’s a golf membership, a convertible car and lots of wine for lunch."

But he explained: "For me, it’s always been a little cabin on an island somewhere with my own canoe and loads and loads of dogs and I just forage. That’s basically what I’d do all day. My grandchildren and children will come to visit me and my wife and it’s just a simple life. That’s all I want, a little off-the-grid house. Right now I’m hooked into the material world and I’ve always liked this idea that maybe I could abandon all of that."

Read more: Ben Fogle

• Ben Fogle announces major career move but knows some will 'be sceptical'

• Ben Fogle bursts into tears in emotional moment in New Lives In The Wild

• ‘My mum was raised by monkeys – I’m not worried about snakes in my jungle kitchen’ (The Telegraph)

• Ben Fogle: ‘There is an assumption that if you are privileged you are somehow immune to suffering’ (The Telegraph)

Watch Ben Fogle announce major career move