Do we like Bear Grylls?
Our score: 7 out of 10. Nothing harmful turned up in his own words or work, but he stood by a friend facing serious allegations, and one Christmas post stirred a row.
Bear Grylls is the bloke who went from SAS-trained adventurer to the face of survival TV. The part that matters for this page is Scouting: he became Chief Scout in 2009 at 34, the youngest ever, and kept the job for years, later becoming the first Chief Ambassador of World Scouting.
The biggest stoush of his recent years involved Russell Brand. In 2024 Grylls helped baptise Brand in the Thames, and the photos landed while Brand faced allegations, which he strongly denies, of rape, assault and emotional abuse. The Daily Mail reported Grylls would stand down as Chief Scout over it, and the Scouts said they were proud of him.
Grylls defended himself in his own words. He said he tries to live in a way that he never judges and always tries to love, and that this does not only apply to perfect people. Where you land depends on whether you read that as grace or as poor judgement; either way, it is the choice of friend, not a finding about Brand.
The harm check comes up fairly clean. In December 2024 he posted a Christmas message calling Mary a Palestinian girl, then dropped the word after the Campaign Against Antisemitism condemned it. He said he was only setting the scene and that she was clearly Jewish. That is a contested wording row, not a pattern, and I found nothing from him on trans people, vaccines or migrants either way.
His recent work leans into his Christian faith. The Chosen in the Wild is six episodes with cast from The Chosen, made by 5&2 Studios, The Natural Studios and Workerbee, with Grylls as an executive producer. That is a faith-audience project, not a harm flag on its own, and I found nothing in these pages tying it to anyone pushing hate.
The good stuff is real. Under his time as Chief Scout, atheists were admitted to Scouting for the first time in 105 years, and the association consulted on an alternative Scout Promise for them. For a man whose faith is front and centre, that is a decent thing to have overseen.