I'm not a lunatic... I just enjoy adventures, says Scots TV explorer Andy Torbet

Andy Torbet (Andrew Cawley / DC Thomson)

Did you run down stairs two at a time? Try a jazzy new shade of lipstick? Scoff sliced beetroot from a jar while wearing a white shirt?

Daring stuff, but not quite in the same league as the folk who were up for a gong at the National Adventurer Awards last week.

Among them was super-Scot Andy Torbet.

The seasoned explorer and TV presenter is a regular face on the likes of The One Show and Coast

I know from his website that he’s the kind of guy who makes your average bloke question their masculinity.

It’s not that he strides around wrestling bears and headbutting boulders – he’s actually a calm and relaxed presence.

But his back story is something to behold.

Here’s the list. He’s an extreme diver. An underwater explorer. A skydiver. A mountaineer. A bomb disposal expert. A former army officer. A TV presenter. An author. A public speaker. Oh, and he has a degree in zoology.

Andy was born in Irvine in 1976, but moved Turriff soon after.

He dreamed of being a diver, and that dream became a reality when his family moved to Aberdeen in 1988 when he was 12.

He joined the local dive club, but back then you couldn’t dive until you were 14, so he had to snorkel above the older members when they went out to sea.

His funds didn’t stretch to the full gear in those days, so he had to resort to a woman’s wetsuit jacket “with the bulges in all the wrong places” and a pair of long johns!

“It was freezing,” chuckles Andy at the memory. “If I started diving now with the same experience I had back then I’d quit after a day. I was much harder as a kid than I am now.”

Another ambition as he grew up was to be a soldier. So after getting his zoology degree he joined the Royal Marines.

Everything was on track for a career with an elite fighting force. And then disaster struck during training when he fell and broke his back.

It was a devastating blow and a lesser character might have thrown in the towel.

But not Andy.

“I thought ‘I’m going to prove I can get fit’. So I did. I didn’t join the army for the easy life.”

Andy went on to serve in the bomb disposal team with 49 Squadron, Royal Engineers – a Commando, Paras and Special Forces support squadron. Overall he was in the army for 10 years and did tours of the Balkans, Iraq and the Falklands.

“I loved Iraq,” says Andy. “I was running bomb disposal teams.”

But surely that’s one of the most tension-filled and scary jobs there is?

“Tension?” Andy shakes his head. “I found it incredibly peaceful. The second I stepped into that no-go zone, it all became very ‘zen’.”

The thing about Andy is he’s not an adrenalin junky. He’s calm, measured and prepared. He doesn’t have a death wish.

“People say ‘You’re a lunatic’ or ‘You’re fearless’ – but none of that is true,” he says. “Cave diving is incredibly safe, sky diving too, if done right.”

Given his CV it’s probably not surprising that TV came calling when the producers of Coast spotted some films he’d put in the internet.

His first piece for them was about ‘sea shepherds’ on Lewis taking their sheep to a little island.

“It basically went really badly,” laughs Andy. “I got on really well with the locals, but they were a little more wary with the crew from London, so I ended up as a sort of go-between.

“The weather was appalling. The team got lost, and I said ‘follow me’ and got my compass out. We had three cameras, and the crew weren’t that fit, so by the end of it I was carrying all three cameras up and down this island.

“I ended up doing four of the six episodes of that series. I now say I wouldn’t be on TV if the weather had been good and the locals had been on side!”

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