DAREDEVIL Nick Knowles says TV bosses refuse to insure him after a string of brushes with death.
The DIY SOS presenter and travel documentary maker says he pays for his own cover, including emergency rescue by helicopter.
He has risked it all climbing towers, flying gyrocopters through storms and getting stuck in a crevice in the Grand Canyon after putting on four-stone in lockdown.
Nick said: “You can’t get insurance because a lot of the programming I’m doing, they are such big adventures.
“I actually now pay an enormous amount to ensure I have helicopter extraction cover instead.”
The danger of hammering his thumb in more than two decades of DIY SOS pales alongside his documentary scrapes.
He said: “They’ve all been dangerous. Climbing out on 200ft towers, swimming in the Arctic circle, jumping in the ice — I love all that stuff. It makes you feel alive.
“My shoulders, neck, back, knees, everything, is knackered because of accidents — but I consider them a badge of honour.”
Most recently, Nick, 61, risked his career in Mongolia, where he met a shaman blowtorching a knife until it was white hot.
He said: “And then he said to me, ‘You’ve got to lick it to get rid of the bad spirits’. I was like… ‘If I burn my tongue badly enough then that’s the end of my career, because I can’t speak’. And so I licked it.”
The dad-of-four, engaged to Katie Dadzie, 33, added: “Every time I get into something hairy, I think, ‘I’ve come all the way here and I’m supposed to be having a go’, so you have to have a go no matter how terrifying it is.”
