Chris Tarrant

Chris Tarrant, OBE, is a radio and TV presenter whose many achievements include hosting the children’s television series Tiswas and the quiz show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, as well as being a popular host on Capital Radio for ten years. Of Extreme Railway Journeys, he writes: ‘I’ve always, always, loved railways, even as a little boy. My granddad, whose own father had been a railwayman, bought me the Big Book of Railways for my eighth Christmas, and I read it cover to cover and marvelled at its pictures for years. I loved the stories of how the old pioneers built the railways through often seemingly impossible terrain, dense jungle, baking deserts and icy mountain ranges, all around the world. ‘I was never a train spotter, even though we lived close to the old Great Western line, in the heyday of steam trains. It was not the trains, but the actual railways that fascinated me, particularly in remote countries far away with exotic sounding names like Russia, Alaska, India and Japan. Often, in wild areas of the planet where there were simply no roads, the railways were the only real link for whole populations. I just loved all the old stories of the men who had the vision to build the first railways where no one thought it possible.‘So when Channel 5 offered me an initial four programmes of Extreme Railway Journeys around the world, I was very excited and jumped at the chance.’