BBC Radio 2 DJ Scott Mills talks all things Celebrity Race Across the World
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00:00Hi, my name's Jack Marshall, I'm a digital reporter with Lancashire Post and Blackpool
00:04Gazette newspapers. Now recently I was at BBC Radio 2 in the park in Preston just covering
00:10the event, soaking up the atmosphere and generally getting pretty soaked myself given that I
00:14was there on the Sunday and the weather was absolutely horrific, rain was torrential,
00:18mud was everywhere, never been so wet in my entire life. But anyway, never mind, while
00:22I was at the event I got the chance to speak to a few of the people who were performing
00:26both on the main stage and in the DJ kind of stage to one side as well and one of those
00:31people who I got the chance to grab for a quick chat was the BBC Radio 2 DJ Scott Mills.
00:37Now one of the things we spoke to Scott about was the fact that he's currently in Celebrity
00:41Race Across the World, so we got his take on how it's gone so far, what the whole experience
00:46was like and just what it was like as an experience to go to such far-flung places. So this is
00:51what he had to say.
00:52After this round the world you should be used to it.
00:55Yeah, exactly. Oh my God, yeah.
00:56This is nothing, is it?
00:57Yeah, we didn't have any rain there.
00:59Didn't you not?
01:00Maybe one time.
01:01It was where the whole thing was in the middle of the biggest heatwave Brazil has ever had.
01:09What a contrast to this.
01:13Well, obviously Brazil gets hot, but if Brazil, it was on the telly like, heatwave alert!
01:20So it's like, it must be hot here. Some days were 50.
01:2450? January's were 50?
01:26Yeah.
01:27Can you just not be outside it?
01:30It was hard with the backpacks and that, and to be fair, they do make sure you have water,
01:36but that's about it. And sunblock.
01:38Right.
01:39Which actually, you have to take your own sunblock.
01:42Your own liquids.
01:43Yeah, I was on like factor 70 at times.
01:45They do factor 70.
01:47Yeah, they do. But it's literally like emulsion paint.
01:50I mean, you're not going to burn.
01:52But even with 50 on, I was burning.
01:55I suppose you just weren't relenting at that point.
01:58Yeah, and then we got to Argentina and it got a bit cooler.
02:01And then by the end, and this is not new information, by the end, Chile, actually quite cold.
02:08Chile was chilly.
02:10Yeah, it was.
02:11Smells a lot like mountains, doesn't it?
02:13Is there any country you'd go back to though?
02:14All the countries you went to, is there any place you'd like to go back to?
02:18The places we went to on race?
02:20Oh my God, yeah.
02:21I think that's what people love about that show is that you, well, the reason I think people love it is because it's a competition.
02:29Yes.
02:30It's, especially this one, it's celebrities struggling a bit.
02:33Yes.
02:34Really good.
02:35And, but you also, it's also a travelogue.
02:39Like you get to see these, and the way they shoot it is incredible.
02:43It's like Sao Paulo, bam.
02:45And it just looks, it's like Attenborough levels of like, it looks incredible.
02:51So yeah, I mean, what an experience of a lifetime.
02:56Do you have people with you while you're doing it?
02:58We have camera and sound, but that's it really.
03:02And a medic slash security guard.
03:04All right, okay.
03:05And a fixer who speaks the local language, because if you get into real, if you were to get into real trouble, they would help, but they do not help you.
03:15It's only if there's a like emergency situation.
03:18Is there like a special button you can sort of like?
03:20Well, no, they're kind of there and they're around, but when I'm going, hello, bus, bus somewhere, they're just stood there going, I know exactly how to say this, but I'm not allowed to help.
03:31I would appreciate it if they didn't speak English, did they?
03:33No, and that was actually the biggest challenge.
03:36I want to say the language barrier for me was something that I did not really take into much consideration because we're English.
03:46Yes.
03:47Everywhere, pretty much, in the world speaks English.
03:49Yes, somewhere, you can find somewhere.
03:51I don't think I've been, I haven't actually been anywhere else before where I'm like, wow, no one speaks it.
03:57Less than 5% of people in Brazil speak English because they don't need to, but we are so lucky that everywhere speaks English.
04:04That's right.
04:05And it made me think, we're so lazy that we don't learn languages because we don't have to.
04:10We are competitive.
04:11But over there, I was like, okay.
04:13I would say it got, I want to say it got better in Argentina, like maybe a little bit, but Brazil was almost impossible.
04:23It's all Portuguese speaking.
04:25Portuguese, which embarrassingly, I didn't know.
04:29I thought all of South America was Spanish speaking.
04:33It's Mexico, isn't it?
04:35Yes, and Argentina and Chile is Spanish, but not Brazil, and I didn't know that.
04:41But it's mad.
04:42They just literally, you get to the airport, they take your phone off you, and they're like, and we're going to Bel-Air in Brazil, and you go, okay.
04:52But even cleverer than this is that they really don't want you to know where you're going.
05:02And obviously, you want to know where you're going, so me and Sam are in the car on the way to Gatwick.
05:06They're like, meet us at Gatwick at 8 o'clock.
05:07We're like, where are we going?
05:09Because all the flights from Gatwick that day and that morning were just like Europe, and I'm like, they've done Europe in the last series, so it can't be Europe again.
05:17And we'd have to have jabs.
05:19So I'm like, okay, we're going somewhere far where you need, it's not France, right?
05:24And I'm like, but we were looking at all the flights, like geeks, like, I mean, it was just like all Europe and the Canaries.
05:33And I was like, we're not definitely going to go to Tenerife.
05:36So they, and I think part of the reason is because there are no direct flights to this city from the UK, but they flew us to Lisbon first and then across to South America because Portuguese.
05:52So the Portuguese airline.