Documentary and Travel Programmes

What inspires two actors to take four months out of their careers to travel across some of the most remote parts of the world on motorbikes?
Ewan McGregor (better known to movie audiences as the young Obi-Wan Kenobi) and Charley Boorman (star of the movie The Emerald Forest and son of the legendary director Sir John Boorman) why they decided to travel from London to New York the long way round. Ewan explained that the trip was born purely out of "our desire to ride motorbikes for a very long time".
The two men met on a film set and immediately bonded over their love of bikes. A dream trip like this was just a natural extension of that. The two started their journey in London in April 2004, and crossed over to mainland Europe.
They then travelled France, Belgium, Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Siberia, Alaska before riding into New York City .

I always wanted to be an explorer, but until September 25, 1988, it seemed I was doomed to be nothing more than a very silly person. On that day I set out on a journey which was to change my life. It became a book and television series called Around The World In Eighty Days, and with one bound, it transformed me from being a very silly person to being a very silly explorer. Eighty Days led to Pole to Pole, which led to Full Circle, which led to the Hemingway Adventure which led to Sahara, and suddenly I found I had a half-dozen very full passports and personal acquaintance with over eighty countries.

Once the travel bug bites there is no known antidote, and I know that I shall be happily infected for the rest of my life.

I have been extraordinarily lucky to have my travels recorded on film by the best camera and sound teams in the business, ably backed up by Basil Pao, the finest stills photographer in the business. I have filled dozens of little black notebooks with my ramblings about the beauty of the world and talked into stacks of mini-cassettes with my impressions of delights, digestive problems, dodgy trains and near death experiences.

Now, exactly fourteen years to the day since I left the Reform Club in London to try and go Around The World In Eighty days, I am about to disembowel myself and let all the material we have collected in over a hundred thousand miles of travel come spilling out onto a new and as yet uncharted ocean.

Like a hairier, considerably less English Michael Palin, Billy Connolly is out to explore cultures, histories and great architecture in his World Tours series of films. Unlike Michael Palin, he's also keen to climb the Sydney Opera House, bungee jump naked and treat us to footage from various comedy performances along the way. What more could you want?
Where better for Billy to kick of his World Tours than Scotland - the land that gave him to the world? The film, made back in 1994, features a cover version of Van Morrison's song Irish Heartbeat, and its lyrics ("I'm going back, going back to my own ones") are fitting. This is a very personal odyssey for Billy, so prepare to see a rather gushier, more emotional side to the Big Yin.
Which is not to say it isn't blindingly funny as well. He performed almost 60 gigs in the period this documentary was filmed, so we're going to see some suitably sweary stand-up moments. We'll also follow Billy as he visits everywhere from Loch Lomond to the Glasgow Necropolis – a sprawling Victorian cemetery as beautiful as it is eerie. But the best bits come when Billy visits places from his own past – including the actual house he grew up in. Might the big man even shed a tear?