Good time Charley

Charley Boorman bounces to the door of his warehouse-cum-office in a back road near Olympia.

"Hi," he says enthusiastically, "I'm Charley." He leads me through the office and into the warehouse. "Look at this," he says proudly, "it's great isn't it?"

In front of me is everything a boy's heart could desire — loads of huge filthy motorbikes, a couple of large all-terrain vehicles, a dartboard on the wall, a drum kit, table football.

The walls are covered with posters of two dirty-looking men riding motorbikes down desert roads. "That's me and Ewan," says Boorman happily, showing me the one of them riding off in a cloud of dust.

In fact, I don't think anything could make 42-year-old Boorman happier than riding off into the unknown with his best mate, the actor Ewan McGregor. With two television series with McGregor under his belt — Long Way Round and Long Way Down — and his own new programme, By Any Means, on BBC2, he's being hailed as the new Michael Palin.

"Oh, don't say that," he says, looking a bit
panicked. "I'm nowhere near him. He's brilliant. His programmes are educational. I'm just a bloke riding on a motorbike all over the world."

But that's not quite true. Though he lives in Fulham with his family, in By Any Means Charley travels from County Wicklow in Ireland, where his father, film director John Boorman lives, to Sydney.

He crosses the English Channel in a small sailing dinghy. He takes trains in India, trucks in Iran, tuk-tuks in Vietnam. He treks for hours in Borneo to take much-needed vaccines to remote dwellings for children. He wakeboards from Malaysia to Singapore.

At the same time, he talks to everyone, and everyone likes him because he is so affable. "I hope it will inspire people to reconsider what they think about countries like Iran, for example," he says. "It's a beautiful place full of very friendly people. I've found 90 per cent of the world is like that, actually."

This programme is a bit of a departure for Boorman. Usually he is with McGregor crossing deserts, mountains and plains. Part of the lure of the two Long Way programmes was the comic yet genial relationship between the friends.

"We really do get on," says Boorman. "We complement each other in the sense that I am the one who worries about things whereas Ewan sees the bigger picture."

But can he go it alone? This is important to him because the success of the Long Way programmes saved Boorman. Six years ago, he had no idea where his career was going. "I was an out-of-work actor," he says. He's been an actor all his life.

He was first cast aged four in Deliverance – a film about male rape in the American outback directed by his father. That must have been freaky, I say. "I was too young to remember," he says. "I just know that I was always going to be an actor. It looks terribly glamorous when you are a child. I travelled all over the place with my father. It was very exciting."

However, after finding roles in other films such as Excalibur and The Emerald Forest (both directed by his father) work pretty much dried up. "I'm a failure, really," he says. "That's how it feels. I used to go for endless auditions and castings and I'd walk through the door and then it was, No, no, no.' I was told I wasn't the right age or I didn't look right."

Boorman is from a close family. He has a twin sister, Daisy, who is a nursery teacher and an elder sister, Katrine, who is married to writer and artist Danny Moynihan. He had another elder sister, Telsche, who died of cancer 11 years ago. His mother, Christel, a former costume designer, separated from Boorman's father a long time ago.

"She is very proud of me," he says. "I mean, I'm her son and I suppose she'd be proud of me whatever I did but I truly believe she is genuinely happy for me that it's all worked out."

When Boorman was a child he was useless at school. "I grew up in Ireland and went to school there — I was not at all gifted. I now know I was dyslexic, but no one knew that then. I think everyone gave up on me. That's why I thought I'd be an actor."

But when that didn't work out Boorman was left twiddling his thumbs. "It's hard to deal with constant rejection," he says. "I really found it took a lot out of me emotionally." But help was at hand in the form of McGregor whom Boorman met on the set of the film The Serpent's Kiss 11 years ago.

"We bonded pretty quickly," says Boorman. "I heard Ewan had a motorbike and I was mad about them so I asked him about his and that was it."
Boorman says that, in many ways, he was surprised they remained friends. "Actors generally don't," he says. "It's all very exciting on set but it's the type of lifestyle where, once the film has finished, you move on."

What made Ewan and Charley stick together then? "Well, our mutual love of bikes and we had a lot in common. We both married when we were young and our wives had just had our first daughters and ... we just got on."

One night, he went over to see McGregor and there was a map laid out on the table. "Ewan suggested that maybe we should do a long bike journey. His wife Eve had been brought up in China and she suggested we went there."

This idea eventually turned into their first programme, Long Way Round. "It just snowballed," says Boorman. "One minute everyone was telling us we should keep a journal so we wouldn't forget it, the next we had a book deal. Then we thought we'd film it and, suddenly, TV companies were interested in the idea."

Boorman is not stupid. He knows that part of the reason the BBC went for it was because of the pulling power of Ewan McGregor. "I'd be naïve to say it wasn't that," he says. "Because Ewan was involved people listened." However, the various production companies that were interested wanted to change it into different things. "One company wanted to crush the motorcycle of the person who fell off most, another one wanted various celebrities to come along and get voted out. We could see it all going wrong."

The upshot was that Ewan, Boorman and director Russ Malkin set up their own company to keep control of the programmes. "It's worked well for us," says Boorman, looking proudly across the office. "Ewan and I will do more trips but at the moment he's off filming. I hope I've got enough of a following to hold my own. I mean, it's resurrected my career. I still think of myself as an actor. I am still looking for jobs but now I get offered a lot of television work and it's saved me."

His wife, Olly, is delighted by his new-found success. "We met 20 years ago and she's seen me through ups and downs. That said, when I say I'm going off for three or more months', I think she's delighted." Why? "Oh, peace and quiet, neat house, simpler life, that type of thing." Boorman says he misses his wife and his children Kinvara, 12, and Doone, 11, terribly when he's away. "I want to reach into the camera and pull them out so they can be with me."

At the end of each trip, his family fly out to meet him. "We then go on holiday. I like the kids to see where I've been and I get so used to being on my own that it's a useful period of readjustment."

Why doesn't his wife come on the trip too? In Long Way Round, Eve McGregor appears complete with motorbike to ride part of the way with her husband and Boorman. On the programme, Boorman's eyes almost whizz round when she appears. "My wife wouldn't want to do that," he says. "There's so much to organise — the kids and we're never on time and, anyway, she works."

Olly Boorman runs a company that places young people in houses with old people. "The idea is that young people can't afford to live in London and some older people would appreciate some help so it is a mutually beneficial situation. She's very clever, my wife."

But maybe now there are reasons for Boorman to feel clever. His television career is surely secure? "I hope so," he says, "but, still, I am proud of what Ewan and I have done. You know, we've been paid to have a great time and I've written a bestselling book and I'm dyslexic! I don't think it gets much better than that."

By Any Means is on BBC2 on Sundays at 8pm.