COURAGE UNDER FIRE
IF YOU’VE EVER watched a Netflix documentary and wondered how members of a TV crew can get up into the jungle canopy, safely dive through underwater caves, or negotiate with AK-47-wielding smugglers who are high on coke, it’s because someone like Aldo Kane has got their backs. Kane has been a stunt rigger on an Avengers movie, journeyed with Tom Hardy and Henry Cavill on Driven to Extremes, worked with Steve Backshall on Expedition and gone head to head with Ed Stafford for First Man Out.
Now, in the BBC documentary Tigers: Hunting the Traffickers, Kane finds himself the star attraction. He still does the hard graft behind the scenes with his extreme locations company Vertical Planet, but producers have clocked both his talent and charisma.
They’re not alone. A few years ago, after an appearance on a TV show, the Scottish Sun ran the headline “Telly’s Hottest Adventurer Scotsman Aldo Kane Will Get Ladies in a Lava With New Volcano Show”. Which was pretty much a statement of fact. As MH sits down for coffee at the Ham Yard Hotel in London’s Soho, it’s undeniable that Kane is a good-looking chap. And though his thick beard gives him a rugged edge, his soft Scottish lilt and smiling eyes are at odds with what must have been (and continues to be) a brutal career.
“Honestly, I enjoy the graft,” he says. “The harder it is at the time, the better the secondary sense of happiness and accomplishment is
