Montanaro UK Smaller Companies Investment Trust

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Charles, with his inexhaustible supply of energy, is rooting for Arsenal when he isn't motivating his own team.

A pity his enthusiastic approach doesn't work with fish.  Despite numerous attempts, he has yet to catch a trout, let alone a salmon.  Although he did catch a piranha during his first trip up the Amazon and is now known as "the white Huaorani" following his second adventure in search of undiscovered tribes in the jungles of Ecuador.

Having survived his first London marathon in a vain attempt to get fit, he spent time in the jungles of Papua with the stone-age Korowai and Kombai who had not seen a white man before.  Although practising cannibals, he was clearly too tough for their taste and survived the adventure – narrowly avoiding a native attempting to shoot his bow and arrow first and ask questions later…

In search of truly undiscovered people, he was temporarily kidnapped in Mamberamo by an unknown tribe where he found that not all natives are friendly.  Undeterred, he went hunting with the Yanomami in Venezuela and the Embera of Panama at the end of 2007 where he got eaten alive by mosquitos and nasty little nigwas and leeches.  In 2008, with his wife to be Jane, he tried his hand at climbing steep hills firstly in Kashmir and then in Bhutan where he met the new King before climbing 18,000 feet to see what altitude sickness felt like. An unexpected 40 kilometre hike in the snow (abandoned by a guide who was lost) nearly ended badly.

He survived running the Bulls of Pamplona as a pre-cursor to further exploits among indigenous tribes.  These included walking safaris with the San people in Botswana and fishing with Australian aborigines.  A return trip in 2009 to the jungles of Irian Jaya (the Korowai) saw him going native and returning with a stick through his nose - much to the disapproval of his wife (since removed – the stick that is).  In 2011, Charles explored the jungles of Sumatra with the Mentawai.

In 2013, Charles founded and largely funded Tribal Survival, a charity aimed at improving the lives of indigenous people living in remote jungles by providing access to Western doctors and medicine.  In 2014, a five-year programme was initiated with the assistance of the World Health Organisation to eradicate Lymphatic Filariasis (elephantiasis) among the Korowai.

For a change, Charles chose to spend time with indigenous people living in colder climates.  In 2017, he spent a fortnight hunting on dog sleds with a remote community of Inuit in Kulusuk (Greenland).  2018 saw him living with the Nenet, reindeer herdsmen in Yamal (North West Siberia).  In both cases, temperatures below minus 30 - 40 degrees were not uncommon and hairs in his nostrils froze.

November 2019 saw a return to the Korowai of West Papua where humidity was almost 100 degrees.  Not sure which is worse.  Once again, he returned with a stick through his nose but also an earring - his wife even less impressed.  Where to next?

Personal

When away from the office, George enjoys running and cycling. He completed the London marathon in 2014 and plans to try l’etape du tour…one day. A yearly trip or two to the Alps or Canada allows him to refresh his snowboarding ‘skills’, with his enthusiasm almost making up for any apres-ski induced balance issues.