British TV Explorer Attacked by Polar Bear on Nat Geo Assignment

Paul Rose's tent was charged by the animal, but the BBC host tweeted that he was OK.

A British TV explorer got a little too close for comfort to a polar bear while on assignment in the Arctic, the Mirror reports.

Paul Rose, who presented the BBC shows Oceans and Britain's Secret Seas, was inside his tent sleeping when the 800-pound polar bear charged it.

Rose, who was on a National Geographic expedition to the Arctic, told the Mirror that the bear "blew the air out of me” after he was "woken up by this heavy weight on my head."

He added: “We stared at each other for a couple of minutes, I was frightened to blink. It was a female, about 800 pounds. If she stood up, she would be well over nine feet tall."

The bear then walked around Rose's tent a few times, disappeared and then came back. “I thought that’s it, I’m a small, naked English bloke in a tent with the world’s biggest carnivore,” Rose said.

The bear eventually left, leaving a startled Rose to contemplate how close he'd come to death. "I’m one of a handful of people who have come face to face with a bear and survived. I feel privileged, although I have a very ripped up tent.”