In less than two weeks, the Main Stage at the GO Diving Show at the Ricoh Arena in Coventry (Saturday 22 February and Sunday 23 February) will be hosting TV stars, authors and adventurers Steve Backshall, Andy Torbet, Miranda Krestovnikoff and Monty Halls.
Steve Backshall
Steve Backshall has had an adventurous life, and during his extensive travels around the globe has drunk blood with uncontacted tribes in Indonesia, as well as nearly getting caught up in riots in East Timor, completed the Israeli paratrooper selection course, got a black-belt in martial arts, come face-to-face with all manner of creatures, from various snakes to Komodo dragons, and scaled some impressive cliffs and mountains.
He is one of the busiest presenters on television, mainly working for the BBC’s Natural History Unit (he has his own season of programmes on Eden television channel alongside legends David Attenborough and Bruce Parry), and before that, he was ‘Adventurer in Residence’ at the National Geographic Channel. He has a huge array of series under his belt, which have taken him to some of the more-remote areas of our watery planet.
He is well known to younger audiences from his Deadly 60 series, and to more-mainstream viewers for the likes of his Expeditions show, which in one episode saw him cave-diving in Mexico’s cenotes.
Andy Torbet
Andy Torbet is a professional underwater explorer, cave and technical diver, Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and Member of The Explorers’ Club. At last count he’s written over 200 articles and presented on 21 TV series, including programmes which saw him dive HMHS Britannic, under iceberg in the Arctic, inside glaciers in Greenland, freedive under Alaskan ice, with giant spider crabs in Japan, pilot the Oceanworks 1ATM Hardsuit and dive shipwrecks and caves all around the world. He’s been lead diver and supervisor on a number of archaeological and scientific expeditions, and spent ten years in the British Forces where one of his roles was commander of the Army’s Underwater Bomb Disposal Unit.
He’s also a professional skydiver and climber, amateur father and seems to spend half his life living out of his campervan, though his last gig – as a stuntman for the new Bond movie – saw him moving in completely different circles.
Miranda Krestovnikoff
Born in land-locked Buckinghamshire, Miranda never thought she’d end up as a water baby, but an attractive vet in the queue for the scuba diving club at University persuaded her to sign up and she was lured into the underwater world, never to look back.
Little did she realise that diving would shape her career. Her very first job as a television presenter involved diving with reef sharks and her first shark bite! Presenting two series of Wreck Detectives for Channel 4, she went on to explore underwater wonders around the UK for BBC2’s BAFTA-award-winning series Coast. She now dives and presents wildlife stories on BBC1’s The One Show and has even presented radio programmes underwater for BBC Radio 4’s Costing the Earth and the BBC World Service.
Her husband and two children have no option but to follow suit and they are all divers, too. She writes regularly about her diving adventures in the UK and abroad and the challenges of taking family to far flung places to pursue her hobby. Her passion is to clean up and protect our precious waters so the next generation can enjoy them as she has done.
Monty Halls
A former Royal Marines Officer who worked for Nelson Mandela during the peace process in the early 1990s, Monty left the forces to pursue a career in expeditions, travel journalism, and marine biology. Monty has since led teams in some of the most-challenging environments on Earth, presented numerous multi-award-winning documentaries, launched his own production company, and become a renowned inspirational speaker and writer. He has also developed a one-of-a-kind leadership and team building system for the professional and education sectors.
Monty is a Land Rover global ambassador, president of the Galapagos Conservation Trust, a Help for Heroes patron and numerous conservation organisations.
He is best known for his three BBC2 series Great Escapes, where he lived on the west coasts of Scotland and Ireland with his dog Reuben. He also presented the multi-award-winning series Great Barrier Reef. His latest Channel Four series, My Family and the Galapagos, aired to great acclaim and featured the whole Halls family in a poignant conservation mission to the Galapagos. A second series has just wrapped filming and will be out later this year. He has written several books, and is a regular contributor to magazines and newspapers, many of them communicating his enthusiasm for the natural world.
Have you booked your tickets for the GO Diving Show yet? It is the perfect way to kick off the 2020 diving season! www.godivingshow.com/dive-show-tickets/