Ed Stafford, a Channel 4 personality, has detailed a terrifying event in which he had a rifle and a machete drawn on him while filming.
The explorer, 47, was recording a documentary series in London when he was forced to halt and escape the area.
Ed was interviewing a man in a ‘dark lane’ on a housing estate in Tottenham while shooting 60 Days On The Estates.
Despite the fact that the respondent took out a gun and a machete, Ed admits he was “a little embarrassed” by the event.
He explained: ‘We were up a dead end, a quite dark alley. The guy was showing me a knife and gun.
‘We were having a conversation and suddenly there’s a machete.
‘Things just felt like they were escalating a little bit so I decided I needed the space to assess.’
He continued to The Sun’s TV Mag: ‘Sometimes you actually find it quite difficult to think because you’re right in the middle of a situation.
‘I beat myself up a bit about that, but then again it hammers it home – you hear about the shootings and stabbings but actually seeing the gun first hand it’s like: “Well, okay, that’s what he’s carrying in order to protect himself because he’s mixing in certain circles.”‘
The former British Army Captain went on to say that he was ‘annoyed’ that the incident had made it into the final cut.
Ed, who has hosted shows such as 60 Days on the Streets and 60 Days with the Gipsies, will also tour estates in Birmingham and Glasgow, as he previously stated that the former took him ‘by surprise’ when he saw how young people would go’straight for a knife’.
Ed said that he was not’squeaky clean’ and would get into fights, but he was ‘never worried about getting knifed’.
‘I thought that was super shocking and horrible that the kids didn’t care.’
Over the course of 60 days and nights, Ed moves in with inhabitants of some of the UK’s most notorious estates.
The ‘eye-opening’ allowed him to record what life on those estates is truly like, with the help of a tiny team and his own camera.
Ahead of the episodes airing, Ed said: ‘Before I started filming this series, all I really knew about council estates were stories I read in the media about gangs, crime and drugs.
‘I wanted to go beyond the negative headlines and stereotypes to find out what’s really happening on housing estates today and the challenges people are facing.
‘This series has been a real eye-opener for me.’
60 Days on the Estates airs Sunday, May 28 at 9pm on Channel 4.
