Brian and Melvyn
Brothers Melvyn and Brian were given very different opportunities in life. Despite their 鈥榟ave and have not鈥� differences, they have always looked out for one another. They would love the chance to reconnect and have fun together, like they did when they were children.
Why did you want to take part of the series?
I've never spent eight, nine weeks with Melvyn.
Melvyn: I saw the first series and thought I could do that, and it was as simple as that, and then I thought who would I want to do it with? And that was Brian. We want to create some new memories.
Brian: I watched the first series and thought this will be fun, exciting, and an adventure with an opportunity for us both to meet up, because we don't meet up that regularly at home, and spend a bit of quality time with each other, as we used to do when we were kids. It was an excuse to get together, and relive some of our old adventures when we were teenagers and young children.
Have you got a strategy?
Brian: I suppose when we were looking at it, we thought we would plan this and plan that, and plan the other, but our strategies have basically gone out of the window, because we can't plan for anything any longer. We didn't know we would be going to China. I wanted to go to the Amazon but I think it's a long way to get there from China! The strategy is that we don't want to be kicked out first, because my children wouldn't let me live it down.
Melvyn: The other worry from our families at home is that we shouldn't embarrass them. So we're going to go all out to embarrass them.
Brian: We get on but we'll have a few arguments and a few discussions on the way. I've never spent eight, nine weeks with Melvyn.
Melvyn: We've never spent that amount of time together. We used to spend two or three weeks together, fishing and that kind of stuff. But not only have we not spent this amount of time together as adults, we've never spent this much time away from our partners either. I’ve been married 44 years and Brian for 38 years, so that's a big wrench for us.
Have you picked up any tips from previous series?
Brian: A couple of things that we're taking with us are a white board and some coloured pens. We have got a calculator because we think a calculator is needed, a little mini one. A compass because neither of us have any sense of direction. Neither of us own a watch, so we bought one because we thought we'd need to know the time.
We bought a couple of iPods, I've got a classic iPod that I've had to download songs on from CDs.
Melvyn: Also a magnifying glass, because my eyes are not very good at the minute.
