Latest news with #Marmaduke
Daily Mirror
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
Bear Grylls boasts about his love of stomach-churning dish 'fried with butter'
He's known for eating everything from scorpions to raw snakes - but Bear Gryll still has the ability to shock, with his latest admission over a bizarre dish he enjoys at home Bear Grylls has boasted that he eats testicles for pleasure at home - on the advice of his son, who works at a butcher's shop. The intrepid TV adventurer, who is famous for eating a variety of stomach-churning meals as part of his survival shows, is quite happy to chomp on beef testicles, brought home by son Marmaduke. The former SAS soldier revealed that the decision to fry up the unlikely bull privates are because Marmaduke insists that the body region boasts the most flavour. The 19-year-old is working as a butcher in north Wales, he explained, before his plan to begin an army career, following in the footsteps of his famous dad - who is a former SAS trooper. Bear said: "Marmaduke is working in a butcher's in North Wales at the moment. He's in his year off. He loves it. He comes home with good cuts of meat. 'But I know he loves the community there. He's done it up in North Wales quite a bit, Well, he comes back, he goes, 'look what I've got.' 'And he is always telling us, we're getting the wrong stuff. 'You want to get this stuff because it's cheaper, but the quality is great. Everyone just buys ribeyes and sirloin and filet, when actually you want the flank, the shin, and ideally the testicles - the beef testicles.' Asked how to prepare them before chewing, Bear reacted: 'Well you probably want to fry them up with butter.' The 50-year-old Celebrity Bear Hunt star made his confession to radio host Dermot O'Lear y, who reacted: "Even when you're off, you're on', to which a laughing Bear responded, 'That's right!" The father-of-three revealed that his middle son is hooked on his part time job: "He has got a plastic scabbard for his knives. He got it off eBay for eight quid." The Running Wild host also revealed that his kids loved being connected to his screen antics of munching on insects, dead animals and vegetation. His sons even urged their father to feed them maggots so that they could be involved in his 40th birthday celebrations. He recalled, 'Because they were obviously smaller then, they wanted to be involved in the party in some way. We had all our best friends in the garden and I wanted to do some games and forfeits, and they didn't want to miss out on this. So I said, look - the treat is, before going to bed, you can each have a maggot." Bear, who was chatting to Dermot to promote his new book You Decide Your Own Adventure, also said that he feels even just camping with family members can have its benefits. "Sometimes, those are the best adventures. It can be in the backyard. It's the simple things, isn't it? What do they say? Sum up parenting in three words. Example, example, example. Get outside and do it together. "And I think often you don't need to come down to a kid's level to say, we're going to play a little game or whatever." Actually kids just want to hang out with you and go and do stuff and go for a walk, a bike ride. "The fun is there inherently. So simple things together, try and lead by example. Live your life with an adventure state of mind, how you approach everything. Work, relationships, friendships, adventure, state of mind. Let that lead."
Otago Daily Times
04-05-2025
- General
- Otago Daily Times
They seek her here, they seek her there
When I was a child, I was homeschooled for some time under the auspices of an American fundamentalism programme called "Accelerated Christian Education". The curriculum was a mess — it was deeply unscientific, homophobic, sexist, racist and Islamophobic for starters. But one thing that really struck me, at the tender age of 10, was a passage in my science booklet that cited the existence of the Loch Ness monster as evidence against evolution. "Nessie", apparently, was a plesiosaur, and was living proof of creationism being the only possible explanation for life on earth. Understandably, I was confused — and entertained. Surely the writers of this passage were taking the mick. No-one actually believed the Loch Ness monster was real, right? It turns out that quite a few people believe in the existence of "Nessie". Indeed, only a few weeks ago, an article in the Mirror breathlessly claimed that a Loch Ness monster hunter had caught "two monsters" in a mating dance. Nessie is getting it on, apparently. The Loch Ness monster, for those who have been living under a rock for the past century, is a mythical creature believed to inhabit Loch Ness in the Highlands of Scotland. "Nessie", as she is fondly known, is large, long-necked, and serpentine, with one or more humps protruding from the water on occasion (allegedly, that is). Nessie was brought to worldwide attention in May 1933 after a local couple, Mr and Mrs John Mackay of Drumnadrochit, claimed to have seen a beast of hideous proportions cavorting around in the loch. This incident was breathlessly reported in the Inverness Courier : "The creature disported itself, rolling and plunging for fully a minute, its body resembling that of a whale, and the water cascading and churning like a simmering cauldron." A few months later, a couple of tourists spotted a "dragon or prehistoric monster", which ambled about in front of their car before plopping into the water and swimming away. Naturally, this sighting only fanned the flames of the "monster" hysteria, and soon London newspapers were sending correspondents to Scotland. In December 1933, for example, the Daily Mail hired celebrity big-game hunter Marmaduke Wetherell to track down Nessie. Marmaduke purported to have found a series of gargantuan footprints along the shoreline, which he argued obviously belonged to "a very powerful soft-footed animal about 20 feet long." Unfortunately for Marmaduke and the editors at the Daily Mail , the Natural History Museum soon revealed that the prints had been faked, likely created using a prop such as an umbrella stand or ashtray fashioned from a hippopotamus leg. Whether Wetherell was the architect of the hoax or an unwitting victim of some local tomfoolery remains a mystery to this day. Nessie was allegedly first photographed on November 12 1933 by Hugh Gray, who was walking his dog along the east shore of Loch Ness. (In the 1960s, it was revealed that Gray's photo depicted nothing more than a joyful otter rolling around in the water.) Then in April 1934, an English physician called Robert Kenneth Wilson allegedly photographed Nessie while on a fishing holiday with his pal Maurice Chambers. Wilson sold the print to the Daily Mail (which apparently had learned nothing from the Marmaduke debacle) for £100 and the snap, depicting the monster's small head and neck, soon became known as "the surgeon's photograph". Wilson clearly felt a bit embarrassed and tried to exclude his name from the inevitable media-storm, but to no avail; he was fined by the British Medical Association for breaching professional ethics. The legend of the Loch Ness monster can be traced back to ancient times. There are local Pictish stone carvings depicting a curious beast with large flippers, and the first written account of a monster may be found in a 7th-century biography of St Columba. Apparently, Nessie took a chunk out of a swimmer in the loch and was readying herself to attack another hapless swimmer when the Irish monk intervened, telling the "water beast" sternly to "go back". It obeyed him, and over the centuries Nessie mellowed into a more calm, gentle creature. In the 1960s several British universities conducted solar examinations of the lake, finding nothing conclusive save for some mysterious, large, moving underwater objects. In 1975, another expedition produced a photograph that appeared to show a giant flipper. There were several other sonar expeditions throughout the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, all with inconclusive readings. Nessie, apparently, just doesn't want to be found. So if Nessie doesn't exist, what exactly are all these people "seeing" in the water? Various theories have been put forward, including floating logs, birds, unusual wave patterns, otters, deer, boat wakes and seismic gas. It's also likely that the "monster-hunters" are seeing what they want to see — influenced by Scottish legends of kelpies and other fearsome creatures, they interpret their sightings of eels and the like as proof of the monster. In 2018, our own Professor Neil Gemmell from the University of Otago led a major scientific investigation into the environmental DNA (eDNA) of Loch Ness, analysing 250 water samples to catalogue the life present in the loch. Gemmell and his colleagues found no evidence for mythical creatures like plesiosaurs or large fish such as sharks or sturgeon, but they did detect a significant amount of eel DNA. I can't quite put my finger on what makes Nessie so delightfully entertaining. Perhaps it's the fact that she's a gentle creature, posing no threat to those who encounter her. It's as if the Loch Ness Monster is some sort of collective "in-joke", a bit like Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. She's a beloved symbol of Scottish mythology and the wild, prehistoric nature of the Highlands. Nessie is also a tourist boon, bringing in about £1 million ($NZ2.23m) to the area each year. There are Nessie boat-rides across the loch, Nessie exhibitions, cafes and gift shops. I've bought several plushie Nessies for my niece and nephew, and you can also find her on T-shirts, teacups, badges, road signs and even bin lorries. Staff at the Loch Ness Centre have even hired a team of digital specialists to weed out all the dodgy AI-generated images of Nessie that have been flooding in recently. In an article with the Scottish Sun , general manager Nagina Ishaq implored: "Please don't send us AI pictures. Those pictures won't be entertained ... It's our duty to ensure we keep some integrity, instead of promoting anything that's AI generated to get attention." Nessie is the gift that keeps on giving. I don't believe a prehistoric monster haunts Loch Ness's depths. But I love the idea of Nessie — the creativity inherent in her sightings, the doctored photographs, elaborate and wildly sensational historic accounts. The Loch Ness monster taps into our love of mystery and wonder; in a sense Nessie represents the "unknown" as something benign and comforting, instead of ominous and threatening. Whether fact or folklore, Nessie's serpentine grip on the public imagination is unlikely to loosen anytime soon. I like to think of her, frolicking around in the murky depths of Loch Ness, deciding on a whim to thrill a boatload of tourists or show off her flips to a few locals. I like to imagine Nessie knows what a celebrity she is — she knows the sense of mystery is what makes her legend so enduring, and she'll continue to tantalise us with brief glimpses of her glorious self for centuries to come. • Jean Balchin is an ODT columnist who has started a new life in Edinburgh.
Yahoo
11-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Meet Bear Grylls and wife Shara's three towering sons who are 'so different'
Bear Grylls, 50, clearly values his privacy when he's not filming Bear Hunt and The Island – just take his island home with his wife Shara for proof! The couple raised their three sons, Jesse, 21, Marmaduke, 18, and Huckleberry, 15, in the remote location, where they value their "adventure and solitude." Bear doesn't often share details or photos of his grown-up sons, but we've rounded up everything you need to know about his "very different" kids… Bear gushed about his eldest son Jesse from an early age, recalling the moment the seven-year-old saved a girl's life. He told the Daily Mail: "They were in a little base in a stream and she fell in. And – I wasn't there, you know, and the story grows and grows every time he tells me – but he did rescue her and he was proud as punch to have dragged her out." As he's grown up, Jesse has clearly inherited his father's sense of adventure. He took part in a training exercise in Gwynedd for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution in 2015 – for which Bear was criticised – and even joined Bear on a helicopter skydiving experience in 2021. The doting father marked his 18th birthday by describing him as "kind, humble, hard-working, original," before joking alongside a video of his base jump: "I can't stop him jumping off stuff." Jesse graduated from Eton College in 2021 and has pursued his art passion with solo shows in London and Switzerland. He often posts photos of his creations on social media. Bear previously admitted he didn't want his kids to follow in his footsteps, telling the Daily Mail: "Do I want them to grow up to be me? No actually. I'm unemployable in the real world. I don't want this for them." Bear's family photos are so few and far between that when he shared a rare photo of his son Marmaduke, fans were left astonished by his appearance. The Man vs. Wild star, who stands at 5 ft 9, marked Marmaduke's 18th birthday with a photo of him towering over his parents at well over 6 feet tall. "18 today! We love you so much Marmaduke… keep shining bright!" wrote the doting dad. One year earlier, he commented on his son's character saying, "So proud of your heart… always kind, fun, loving and positive." Marmaduke seems to enjoy a quieter life including cooking classes at the Vale House Kitchen in Bath. He put his skills to use working in a butcher's to fund his travels. In 2025, Bear shared photos of the family hugging Marmaduke as they said their goodbyes. "So sad but also happy for Marmaduke - saying goodbye to him here in Australia as he heads to Asia for four months. He's worked hard in a butcher's in London, earned his way and is now going off for his own adventure… have fun, stay safe, come home soon. We miss you," he wrote. Huckleberry is just as sporty as his father. The 15-year-old, who attends Eton College, not only loves joining his brothers for runs, skiing holidays and skydives, but he also showed off his tennis skills in the national finals at the Play Your Way to Wimbledon event in 2023. "It was quite tough and tiring but it was all good fun," he told the Gazette & Herald. "It's been amazing playing at Wimbledon, I've loved it. I'm really proud of myself for getting here – 14,000 people tried to qualify and to get into the final 50 is quite amazing." When he's not adventuring, he's getting stuck into cooking breakfast at home, with Bear joking on Facebook: "Most mornings we find Huckleberry locked in a battle to master the perfect poached eggs." Bear previously told HELLO! that his sons are all unique, but they have one shared interest. "All the boys are so different, and like all teenagers, they change their mind pretty often, but they have a great spirit and have grown up to love the outdoors," he said. Speaking of their family island St Tudwal's Island West on the Llŷn Peninsula in North Wales, he added: "We have no mains electricity or water and run everything totally off-grid, but we love it. READ: Anne Hathaway's son Jack makes rare appearance during star-studded outing
