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Simon Reeve is best known for travelling the world and taking viewers home with him during his documentaries. However, before he achieved TV success, the journalist struggled during his teenage years. The popular presenter has made his living visiting over 120 countries in two decades, but prior to this, he almost experienced death when he was just 17 years old. The troubled teen, who has been open about his mental health struggles in the past, was going to throw himself off a bridge but changed his mind when a lorry drove past below. According to the , he opened up that the act of walking saved his life.

He said, "I need to travel. It's what I realised when I was in the darkest place you could get to, literally on the edge of that bloody bridge. I was unemployable. I was hopeless, helpless, and lost.

"I flunked out of school and I had no qualifications, I was going nowhere. I didn't know anyone or anything. I had no ambitions. And yet the sheer act of putting one foot in front of the other was meaningful enough to provide solutions for me.

"The act of walking to the job centre provided me with more answers than what I actually got at the job centre. Because you start walking and you start lifting your gaze, moving your body, and you start finding a direction and purpose for yourself."

Now 52, Simon lives in Dartmoor with his wife, Anya, their son Jack, and their two dogs. He has since insisted that his TV success was down to luck, hard work, and his troubled past.

"I would not have gotten this very lucky gig if I had not been through those troubled years," he said, "Everything we go through makes us who we are."

Simon's adventures have seen him make series in Turkey, the Americas, South America, Scandinavia, the Indian Ocean, Australia, and Cornwall.

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