Channel 4's daring new show The Island with Bear Grylls starts tonight, and trust us - it's worth a watch. The show sees 13 men getting dumped on an island in the Pacific for a month - with only a couple of knives and a day's water. Would they be able to survive? Even the camera crew were taking part with them. Well, we wanted to get to know a bit more about the stars of the show so we spoke to them at the launch to find out why on Earth they'd agree to sign up for this...





1. Some of the guys had pretty deep reasons for going on the show.

71-year-old Tony opened up about his previous "depression" and said that he had suffered from an "alcohol problem" - "Things happened that I recovered from" - while Craig admitted that he'd hit a "low point" in his life. "I sort of lost direction as to where I was going - a breakdown of a relationship, I put on a lot of weight," he said. "And I just wanted to find myself again. I think being on the island and being stripped of everything was a good way of doing it because I had no contact with anyone, and it gave me time with 12 other guys to reflect on my life, what I can change and how I can improve it."

As for Dean? "I just wanted to change people's perceptions of gay people. I know it's 2014 - 'It's fine, it's accepted' - but is it? Because a lot of people still give you drama for it. You get a lot of bashing for it. For me, it was to prove that it doesn't matter what sexuality you are, who you like, what you do for a living, if you like fake tan - it doesn't matter. You're all the same people deep inside." (Oh, and he was supported by his fellow castaways: "Before I went out there I was a bit nervous because I was like, 'I'm going to be, most probably, the only gay guy on the island - I'm with 12 straight men'. First impressions you're like, 'He's going to hate me, he's going to hate me, my life's hell'. I genuinely thought that I was going to have to fight my corner every minute of the day - but no-one cared!")

2. The camera guys took on way too much at the start of the show. Yeah, filming and surviving takes its toll...

"I think in that first week, the guys who were there as crew were trying to do too much in some ways," cameraman Matt explained. "We were trying to do two jobs and I think luckily these guys realised that was happening and I think they had a bit of a chat and they said they would quite happily carry us along while we got along with the day job. We did pitch in - and personally I found the easiest job I could do was bring in the nets every morning, because it doesn't take long and then I can get back to filming and documenting. It was about finding those jobs we could do while also keeping the filming going."

3. Tony was very open about how real the whole show was.

"Nothing was staged once," he said. "You can't pretend to lose the right amount of weight. Your bowels work in strange ways - in straight Yorkshire terms, it was painful to go for a s**t. Nothing worse. And I couldn't have taken part in it [if it was fake]. If Michael Mansfield was here cross-examining us, we would all tell the same story."

4. Food and drink was a big issue - take the poo fish.

"I was so looking forward to some fresh food - not oyster or snail or crab," Dean said. "That was rank. And water - that water that we drunk that was brown. I struggled with it big time. I nearly went days without drinking water because I just couldn't bring myself to do it." Wait, there were oysters though? Well, as Dean explained: "They weren't glamorous oysters. If you're whacking them off a rock and it's full of sea salt... In a restaurant you get them and go, 'This is beautiful' and shove them in your gob. It wasn't like that. You whack it off, then you have to peel it out, you have to cut all the s**te out. And snails, they're not the same. Try them. Be my guest. It was horrendous.

"Apart from fish - apart from poo fish... We had some amazing fish. But poo fish, oh my God. It was fish that tasted like poo. We'd cook it and sit round the camp fire and you'd hear, 'Oh, poo fish'. Someone always got a poo fish. It was a fish that had been in the net too long and gone soft and you'd cut it open and you could smell it as soon as you pulled it out. But we ate it because we had nothing else." Still, at least they appreciate everything now. "It's continuously amusing to have tap water," Kiff quipped, while Ryan joked: "I feel really smug every time someone says they feel hungry or something. 'I'm starving'. No, no you're not!"

5. Sometimes the island might look nice. It was not.

Poor Sam got stung by a jellyfish on the very first day because he got a bit excited about seeing the sea ("It was so claustrophobic in the jungle - dropped in the mangrove, in the jungle. It's really claustrophobic. And then suddenly coming out to that white sand was amazing.") As Sam says, it might look nice, but it was treacherous. "Things that looked like picture postcards seduced you into relaxing and then as soon as you relaxed they slapped you," he said. "All of a sudden you got bit by something, you got stung by something, you stood on something, something went badly wrong. You suddenly figure out this is not a holiday destination - this is real. And if you don't respect it, it will bite back. Stupid little things like putting your hand on a tree to step over, and then there's ants running up your hand. These things are violent little sods, aren't they?"

6. The castaways had a three-second rule (and no, it's not about dropping food - they're so over best before dates by now.)

"We said over and over again, if you stop thinking for three seconds you cut your fingers off," Chris explained. "If you stop thinking for three seconds, you break your ankle. If you stop thinking for three seconds, you fall out of a tree and you break your back. And it was constantly, constantly, constantly. How many times did we shout at each other, 'Three seconds!' Because you'd see something. We'd go along the coastline - one of the sides of the island was very, very rocky and we'd go out there looking for oysters or whatever, and you'd come to a ravine between two rocks and you'd just shout, 'Three seconds', because it was just a reminder to say, 'Be aware - one slip...' Rupert added that it was an "unforgiving environment": "A mistake there would cost you dearly."

7. There were some really hard times.

"It wasn't just like we went there, and then we slowly learnt how to do it, and then we left," Sam said. "There were some big peaks and troughs - and there was a big trough. All of the initial excitement and adrenaline does carry on for the next few days, but then there's quite a steep decline when we went, 'S**t, we've got ages left'." Rupert added that it got "pretty dark", while Chris explained: "You know in a game of chess you've got the beginning game, the middle game and the end game? The beginning game was adrenaline and the end game was adrenaline because obviously you're getting very excited about going home, but the middle game was endless. And there was a period of time in the middle where the food ran out and we struggled. They were dark days, there's no doubt about it."

8. Everyone's feeling a lot calmer after their time on the island.

Rupert admitted to previously being quite "grumpy and shouty" - now he's "more zen" ("I think when you've gone through something like that, your sense of what a real problem is is much clearer.") As for 23-year-old farmer Joe? Well, he was pretty calm anyway to be honest! "Living on a farm, you've still got the same jobs to do, day in, day out," he said. "Not a lot changes. But the sheep are pleased I'm back! They had missed me, to be honest. I am a lot calmer, but I wouldn't say I was an angry person when I went." Neurologist Sam joked that he's calmer about diagnosing people now - "You've got all this food to eat!" - but, on a more serious note, described the experience as "quite profound" ("Somewhere in between modern complexities and eating snails [would be good].") And Chris has written a bucket list and has gone from being a "self-confessed workaholic" to booking a whole load of holidays.

9. This experience might be the best possible diet plan.

Obviously, when the guys came off the island they had a bit of a binge. "We were all like, 'We're going to have Dominos, KFC' - we went crazy," Sackie joked. "But ever since then, I have the fish diet - I have fish or chicken or veg and I don't really need the carbs. My whole eating habit has changed. People are like, 'You used to eat so much'. It's like, 'Yeah, but I don't need to'." And Kiff revealed that Bear brought them a bag of nuts and fruit when he picked them up - and they all thought it was chocolate. "I'll never have a banana again like that in my life!" Sackie drooled.

10. They might have been living hand to mouth - but that didn't mean they didn't have time for arguments.

"You have to work together, but you don't have to get on," Sackie said. "We didn't always get on all together at the same time. But we all had a rapport, so to speak. And no-one really detested anyone either. Arguments weren't that huge and massive. We kind of all did get along because we would all pull together, we were all there helping each other out and supporting each other. There weren't any raging arguments." Well, that's what Sackie thought. "That's not entirely true from the footage actually!" Bear joked. "You guys forget it because what happens one day, you've forgotten the next day. There were some quite explosive moments."

But Kiff suggested that men don't hold grudges for very long ("Once you've got it out and had your shout, almost your next inclination is to make up and be friends," he said) and Ryan added: "Things that annoy you, you've got to hold your tongue, because you're in that situation. But if you weren't in that situation, the same things wouldn't even annoy you! It adds to the inner stress that you have when you're there." And all people who suffer from hunger will understand Mike: "It was a pressure cooker at times because you're all living in each other's pockets. I don't know if you've ever been quite hungry - I'm bloody miserable if I miss breakfast! We missed a few days' worth of food so everyone's a bit narky and a little bit short anyway. Ryan's absolutely right - you've got to be quite conscious that you don't piss people off."

The Island with Bear Grylls begins tonight (May 5) at 9pm on Channel 4.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io