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How I ended up with my Own TV show

Around ten years ago I met a cameraman in Istanbul. Last week I finished filming the final episode of my own TV show. Those two sentences are connected.

Let me share the story how I ended up recently finished filming the 12th and final episode of ‘Where to Next’ with Johnny Ward. A whole season of my travel and food TV show on TRT world. Wild. It’s funny how life works. You know, I’ve been a blogger for 15 years and I never had any intention of being on TV or having a TV show.

Over the years, I’ve had some opportunities to do some cool stuff for brands and all that, but not a TV show per se. And one of those cool opportunities, I was speaking at an event in Istanbul around 10 years ago.

I was keynote alongside a few other people, like Shay Mitchell, the actress, and Jack, @doyoutravel Instagrammer, a friend of mine nowadays. And to cut a long story short, there was a lot of famous YouTubers and Instagrammers and people far bigger profiles than mine. But the owner of the company personally followed me and liked my stuff. Not that I, necessarily had the followers required (I didn’t, and still don’t!), but he liked my message and how I managed to monetize it and become free and all the rest, along with the charity stuff we do, and the fitness stuff. So he invited me to speak, and I did.

Networking skills

I’ve always been an awful, awful networker. I know that I’ve done a lot of cool things, like the Ultimate Explorers Grand Slam, every country, the charity stuff, stuff with my mum, making a few million from my blog, et cetera, et cetera. And I know the media do occasionally pick up my story, but there are a lot of other people around social media and YouTube and all the rest who’ve done a lot less cool stuff with a lot bigger profiles, because they chase it, and perhaps that makes me an idiot. Certainly a lot of people have told me so. Part of that is because I hate networking. I hate going to events with a contrived plan to speak to this guy because he might give you this, or speak to this lady because she could give you this. I’m just awful at it. If I make friends with people, it’s because I want to be friends. Simple as that.

Now, I’ve never been good at it long before my blog took off, and I’m still awful at it in my 40s now. So, with that said, everyone else was networking like crazy at this big glitzy event I was speaking at. There were supermodels there and TV stars, and everyone was battling to sit on each other’s tables with the higher-profile people, and I just hate all that stuff. So I felt a little bit out of place.

I gave my speech and it went well, and that meant, because I had some kind of clout at that event, some people were also trying to speak to me and sit with me. Like I said, it all felt a little contrived.

There was a big film crew there of course. We were doing media interviews. And there was one ‘cameraman’, who was just a lovely guy with really amazing energy. He was fun and smiley and great. His name was Selim. He was Turkish. And he kinda changed my life to be honest.

New mates

I could see Selim running around like a crazy man, working so hard. And I could also see high-profile social media stars clicking their fingers at him. Get me from this angle, film me from there. Squeezing past other people, fighting for space on the camera. Summoning him and directing him and ordering him, amongst other people too, that they were ordering, and it just felt awful. And initially I felt a little bit sorry for him, so I started talking to him. His English was maybe six out of ten, and my Turkish was zero out of ten.

But he had such a great energy. And the event was multiple days. We ended up becoming friends, and I was always just hanging around with him, drinking with him, sitting with him. Selim and I became new mates. No networking agenda, just new friends.

Then it turned out that old Selim wasn’t just a ‘cameraman’. He owned the production company that was making the event film. Because he cared about the event, he was carrying cameras himself.

I’m going to get you a TV show

This was way back in 2016, something like that, around a decade ago. After the event, and after a few days, and we were getting so well, Salim said to me outright “I’m going to get you a TV show. You should be on TV”. I rolled my eyes, told him, I can’t imagine ever happening. I don’t know the first thing about TV, nor is it something I’m seeking out. And he said, I promise. And I never thought anything about it again.

Charity Trips

I stayed in really quite close contact with Selim. I really loved his energy and could see us becoming good friends, which now 10 years later we absolutely are. Aound the same time I had just started Mudita Adventures. We were building playgrounds for impoverished communities, malaria clinics, even kindergartens across Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Ethiopia etc.

I asked Selim if he would like to come to some of our charity trips and make some videos about our charity trips to help promote them and help us raise money so we could do more charity projects. And he said yes. So our burgeoning friendship became a really close friendship, and I traveled to multiple countries with him.

He made this one about the library in Bali we built for example:

In 2019, I put together a climb of Mount Fuji with my mom, to mark her 70th. She had had Parkinson’s for about 10 years at the time. We were raising $20,000 to find a cure for Parkinson’s (on the proviso we’d would climb Mount Fuji together – Obviously a lot bigger challenge for her). And she managed it (well done mum!). We raised the money.

Selim and his brother Can, who’s now also a friend of mine, flew to Japan and filmed the whole thing. We continued to do fundraising for Parkinson’s. Another $15k, and another $20k. We did a 100 kilometer tandem in Jordan. We did the Serengeti marathon in Tanzania, and Selim would come back and forth all the time to film these things for us, because he thought it was a message that should be spread. He also became really close to my mom. So our friendship was just beautiful, and I’m grateful to this day that I met him way back then, long before the TV show stuff.

• Selim also made a documentary about my mum’s Parkinson’s journey too. It’s now live, more details on that soon too:

Like family

We did a lot of travels together. He’s come to Chiang Mai, stayed at my house. I know his wife. He’s now a super close friend of my family, he knows my wife. As I said, he’s friends with my mom. And our friendship was long beyond what it initially started as when I was lost at that event with my failure to network and he was getting ordered around like a servant.

Filming a Pilot

Out of the blue, last year in 2025, maybe it was December 2024, I got a call from Selim,

He said, can you fly to Istanbul to film a pilot for a TV show? I promised you this 10 years ago, and now we have some budget with the national broadcaster of Turkey, TRT. They have a channel called TRT World, which is an international channel, broadcast to 100+ countries and all the rest. And within a week, I found myself in Istanbul filming a pilot for a TV show.

Greenlighting Season 1

Selim is a super skilled producer, editor, screenplay writer, videographer, cameraman, everything. He does it all, and he’s great at it all. He’s got a lot of history in TV and all the rest. I say that because I filmed the Istanbul pilot, and I have to be honest, I did a terrible job.

I was nervous, I was uncomfortable, I was self-conscious, I wasn’t fluent, and I was absolutely not a natural. But Selim and Nihan, his wife, were so supportive. They lied to me throughout, telling me I was doing a good job, even though I knew I wasn’t, but I tried my best. And then through Selim’s friend’s super skills, they did a final edit for the pilot, and the edit was actually pretty good!

So they submitted it to the national broadcaster, and lo and behold, we got the greenlightt. A contract for 12 episodes, with me as ‘the talent’, as they call it, although there was a distinct lack of talent, but that’s the name of the role, and then Selim and his brother Can as the executive producers.

Fliming

The pilot was done by Selim and his production crew from his own company. For the whole proper series though, TRT World wanted to do it in-house, so they hired Selim and Can as executive producers, and then we did it in-house.

When I went to film the first official episode that wasn’t the pilot, I didn’t really know what to expect. They fly me in business class from Thailand, and I land in Erzurum in Turkey, and we go straight to filming. No break. Fly all night, 20-minute rest, straight filming, I guess that’s what I’ve done on TV. And I was expecting maybe a cameraman and a producer maybe, I don’t know.

But within minutes, I was walking through these popular tourist areas with hordes of tourists getting ushered out of the way, people following me with those big white flexible panels that reflect light, three, four, five cameramen, two producers, three sound guys, a director, two executive producers, a driver, my own car with another driver. And I was deep in this TV world right from the outset. It was an eye-opener.

Over the next 18 months I flew backwards and forwards between Thailand and Türkiye more than a dozen times. between Thailand and Turkiye. Each episode of the 12 episodes was filmed in a different historical region of Turkey, Konya, Kars, Erzurum, of course Istanbul. And it was just a beautiful experience, albeit such, such hardwork.

The TRT World team also became good friends. It was brutal at times. Fliming from skiing in minus 20 to plus 40 degree beach scenes, and obviously there was the entire team have decades of experience, and then there’s me clueless, trying my best as a presenter, and they were kind and compassionate. To explore awhole country, to meet all these wonderful people, itt was a really wonderful experience filming all those episodes.

I know that I was probably the weak link, but I tried my best, and I can see my own progression from awkward to less awkward to slightly less, less awkward until it’s kind of passable towards the end haha! And I’m just so grateful to Selim and the TRT World team for bearing with me through that learning curve.

Silver Winner of the Telly Awards in NYC

About a month ago, I got a crazy tag on Instagram from some TV network or something in New York.

I’d heard nothing about this, but we had been nominated for the Telly Awards, Best Travel Show or something along these lines. I had no idea it even happened. I certainly wasn’t invited to New York to the awards ceremony, which I would have loved to have gone, actually, in retrospect.

Sadly, we didn’t win it, but we did become silver winners of the 44th annual Telly Awards, which is baffling to me, but a lovely pat on the back considering how confused I was for 18 months. Then we were quite confident, of course, that season two would kick in.

Selim and I became brothers, basically. I spent most of my year with him, and I appreciate him so much. The TRT World team became really good friends. The producers, Sinem and Baris, were so kind to me and so patient, and they also did a wonderful job. I filmed with so many Turkish celebrities (admittedly I didn’t know who they were), and it was just a wild experience, all this VIP treatment through the country. Also to turn on the TV sometimes and see yourself on there is crazy.

In the end, the network loved it, actually. I can see from the 12 episodes some of the times I’m very uncomfortable, but that passed, and now I feel a lot more confident in my ability to do this TV stuff.

So then it came to the option of season two. I pitched them the idea of, instead of doing it in Turkiye, let’s do a TV show or season two of Where To Next, where we visit the least visited countries on Earth, working back.

I thought that would be cool. But of course, TRT is the national broadcaster, they use national funds, and they want to promote the country. So season 2 would once again be exploring every corner of Turkiye. Hmmm. Okay, maybe I’ll do it. The money’s decent, and it’s a great experience for me; Also when my time’s gone in this world, my son will be able to see me on TV. Okay, maybe I’ll do it.

Based on similar circumstances to season one, where Selim is still the executive producer, I work with the beautiful team that I worked with on season one, and also perhaps I get a little bit of a pay rise, now I’m not such a newbie. So I spoke to TRT, and I said all this, and it all looked good.

They came back to me, and in the end, I offered season two, which is flattering. But on the basis that we cut Selim out. Bearing in mind that it was Selim who had created the show, filmed the pilot, took a punt on me, was the executive producer, but now they wanted to do it entirely in-house, apart from me as the presenter, who they would retain, but cut everything else off.

So then I had the choice to continue without Selim, or try to stay loyal, despite the opportunities and the career boost on offer. I’m proud to say that I told them I can’t do it. They can either double my pay, and I will pay Selim myself out of my own pocket. Or they can bring Selim back and we’ll do it together as the brothers that we are. And they said no. And that was the end of my TV career of Where To Next.

Where you can watch it?

TRT World is Turkey’s English-language international news and documentary channel, broadcasting globally across Europe, the Americas, the Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific. It’s already been live. But you can recap it on their youtube page here:

So where to next?

So what’s the update? Well, I’m still best mates with Selim, and I’m grateful for everything he continues to do for me.

Actually, our two challenges that we did when we ran around Kuala Lumpur and Singapore was no hotels, just airport lounges, and then again recently in Dubai and Qatar. That was Selim and me doing that together. YOU CAN SEE THAT HERE. He’s the cameraman and editor and all the rest for that.

I’m sure I’ll be seeing him again soon. He’s talking about spending winters in Chiang Mai, which would be amazing. Also, He has some great ideas about how we can reignite this idea of getting a TV show of the least visited countries on earth. That would be a real dream of mine.

I don’t want to be on TV for the sake of being on TV. I don’t want to be on TV for the sake of making money. With a young kid at home, a wife at home, with my constant battle to be fit and healthy, just to be famous doesn’t mean anything to me. But if I could be part of a TV show that showcased places that deserve to be famous, where tourism and tourist dollars can transform those communities and countries, I would love to be part of that.

That kind of obscure travel, the adventure, the essence of of life. That’s beautiful. If I could help inspire other people to do those kind of things, would be something I would be proud to be part of. So if we can make that happen, we will. And if we can’t, I’m very grateful for the opportunity that I had for this. It was a very interesting chapter of my life.

Thoughts on networking now?!

People always tell you networking changes your life. Maybe they’re right. But I think they’re wrong about how. I didn’t get a TV show because I collected business cards or worked the room. I got one because, ten years ago, I treated the cameraman like a human being. That cameraman became one of my closest friends. And he kept a promise he made a decade earlier. So let’s see what life holds. I’m still awful at networking. But i’m open to improving.