The joker in the travel pack

Ian Wright came to China to shoot season three of his latest show Invite Ian Wright. Jiang Dong / China Daily

Before he sent a show reel to Channel 4 to be a travel show presenter, Ian Wright did lots of jobs - painting, cycle courier, making jams and jewelry and selling them on his stall in Spitalfields Market, London.

His five-minute video showed him in London's Liverpool Street Station, dropping his bags after slipping on the floor. He hit his head on the camera and shouted: "Here we are in London " Then he tried to change money on the black market and got beaten up. When he was on the toilet, he talked about food and advised visitors to take it easy. Then he got arrested and ended up in jail.

He sent the reel in for a joke but, funnily enough, it got him an interview to present Global Trekker, an adventure tourism TV series.

The job has proven to be longlasting, and he has no plans to quit.

"Never!" he shouts, feigning fury. "It cannot possibly get better than traveling around the world, going to hundreds of different cities in 20 years, meeting the most amazing people you have to fight me for that."

He came to China to shoot season three of his latest show Invite Ian Wright. Produced in conjunction with Discovery, it looks at cities as revealed to him by the locals.

The first stop was Harbin, a chilly Northeastern city that's Heilongjiang's provincial capital. Wright's first day saw him jumping into a river in temperatures as low as -25 C to join local winter swimmers. "Everywhere I go, if someone is going in cold water, I've always got to go in, too," he says.

The 47-year-old is a whirlwind, jumping out of his chair, imitating people and animals he met on the journey. He writes his schedule on the back of his left hand.

"If there is a boxing ring, I will always go for it, and always get beaten up by a woman champion boxer. You know, it makes great TV."

Wright seldom refuses to do mad or dangerous things. He fell off a bull when trying bullfighting in Mexico and survived the lava of a volcano in Vanuatu, but he refused to scare a group of lambs a farmer had just rounded up, because he thought it would be disrespectful.

"The scariest thing in traveling is to buy the ticket. Once you buy a ticket, whatever happens just happens."

In his pack there are no GPS or dry pants. The only must is his sketchbook. He once had a painting exhibition at Chats Palace, London.

He is known for not doing research about the places he is about to visit, and that included China.

Wright expected Chinese people would be quiet, unemotional and reserved. But when he traveled in Harbin, he found "it was absolutely nonsense".

"People there are so lovely. They are obsessed with life and up for anything," he says.

He bumped into a man surnamed Jin, a millionaire who owns a bar in the middle of town. A huge fan of American movies, he likes to turn up in different costumes and imitate movie characters.

He even edits himself into a short video replicating General Patton's 15-minute speech at the beginning of the biopic.

Then Wright met a man surnamed Ma, who was quiet and informative at first, but after two days, he was "out of control". Lively and enthusiastic, he laughed, talked with Wright about his family and the city's history and shared his passion about the Winter Olympics.

Meeting "creative, mad" people is one of the best things about his job, Wright says, and he has the flair to befriend them in a short time with his humbleness and humor.

"England has the reputation of being quite stiff, colonial, superior, the empire, that class thing but when I am doing it, all you see is a monkey that speaks English," he says. "People relate to that."

Having lived most of his life in east London, a relatively undeveloped area of the metropolis, he has developed a mad sense of humor and never feels superior. "Like any group of people suppressed, Eastenders don't give a shit about life," he says. "Everything can be taken as a joke."

He compares himself to "lucky glue" that sticks interesting stories together. "What I have done in life? Nothing. I walk around and do a silly TV program," he says.

"When you are talking to someone who has survived Hiroshima, someone in Mongolia who's got 12 degrees in different subjects and speaks five languages, you are nothing."

His next stop in China might be a film studio near Shanghai.

"Have a look at this Chinese Bollywood and may get a role there," he says.

The first season of Invite Ian Wright, featuring Sri Lanka and India, will run until March 15 on China Travel Satellite Television (TSTV). Season two will premiere on TSTV in the second quarter of 2012. The third season, a three-episode China special, including the city of Harbin, will be broadcast after that.