Bear Grylls has said that Sir David Attenborough's traditional approach to natural history is "a bit dry" for today's young audience.
The former SAS trooper and television adventurer is set to follow in the octogenarian's footsteps with his new ITV natural history series, Britain's Biggest Adventures.
"If it's just natural history it can be a bit dry," he told Radio Times. "When Attenborough was 25 it was totally not dry because it was totally new, but to do something for young people now, it needs that adventure, I think, to inspire them."
While Sir David is regarded as one of Britain's best broadcasters for his informative, softly-spoken approach, Grylls, 41, will be opting for death-defying stunts, including diving without any breathing equipment to 52 feet in search of mantis shrimp.
But he acknowledges that he will have Sir David Attenborough in part to thank for the success of his new series.
"I have a sneaky suspicion that these shows are going to do, accidentally, really well. If you look at the success of the Attenborough stuff, and Coast over the years, and some of the adventure stuff we've done, I think this is a really smart, simple, uncomplicated combination of all those things," he said.
Grylls made it clear that he was not criticising Attenborough - who holds 31 honorary degrees from British universities, more than any other person - adding that he was "a personal hero, a legend and a humble, great man".
In the interview, Grylls also defended his controversial decision to leave his 12-year-old son Jesse stranded on a outcrop of rocks off the coast of North Wales in August for an RNLI training drill.
"They asked me to do the exercise, they took the pictures, and all of the local RNLI love it," he said.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here