Olly Steeds wears no fedora and has no whip tucked in his belt. Yet bring it on: from high-altitude Peruvian tombs to the Middle-Eastern desert and an Ethiopian cathedral where occult treasures are thought to be hidden, the man strives, like Indiana Jones, to unlock the mysteries buried under the sand of time.In the new series for Discovery Channel, Solving History With Olly Steeds, which will premier June 28 across Asia, the journalist/adventurer/daredevil takes his viewers across the gruelling stretch of latitudes and history to search for possible answers to some of the world's most popular mysteries.
In Singapore recently to promote the series, Steeds, sporting a good mix of rugged charm and boyish ease, talked to Real.Time about how journalistic approach can be applied to find credence in the obscure, even apocryphal, chapters of human history.
As a broadcast reporter for ABC, Al Jazeera and Channel 4, Steeds did news reports on illegal logging, slavery, and human smuggling. Yet wearing another hat as an explorer, he promises to bring history and adventure together in the seven-part series that will probe the "iconic mysteries", from the Ark of the Covenant - that fabled chest containing the Ten Commandments - the Nazca Lines of Peru, the trail of Eldorado, the Lost City of Gold, Atlantis, the Nazi Treasure, Hitler's Mummies, and the notorious Devil's Island.
The title of the show, Solving History With Olly Steeds, may sound ambitious, but the man assures us that he's not out to solve anything - instead, he's simply guiding us through a learning process in which history can teach us about the present - and, why not, the future.
You're a journalist, but with this show you're also a TV personality. What do you bring from your journalistic experience into the role of a TV adventurer?
I see myself as a journalist, I don't see myself as a TV personality, because I believe I have credibility as a journalist. For half of the year, I still do frontline reporting for Al Jazeera, Channel 4 and BBC. I need to go out and learn what's going on in the world and to be in touch with the reality of the present.
Yes, some of the time I come in and investigate these iconic mysteries - from the Ark of the Covenant to Hitler's Mummies. I want to find out what is fact, what is fiction, what is opinion, and draw my conclusion from it. So I bring in all my journalistic skills into the series.
One of these skills is to be able to ask tough people tough questions, and also to operate in a difficult environment. For instance, in doing the story about the Ark, we went and talk to antique smugglers in the West Bank, then we met with grave-robbers and arms smugglers in Peru for the Nazca story, because they know the landscape better than anyone.
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