You’d think after motorbiking 18,000km across Africa Max MacGillivray would be ready for a break. Quite the contrary – in fact, he says the Great Fruit Adventure is only 25 per cent complete.
Having completed the mammoth tour of various producer regions and companies, MacGillivray is now visiting schools across the UK to raise awareness, and crucially, excitement about fresh produce and where it comes from. A book series is next on his list, with plans to emulate a Horrible Histories type format with fruit characters designed by children, as well as videos to bring the trip to life, and a theatre tour to reach even greater numbers.
The idea, he says, came from a lack of education in the national curriculum about the benefits and provenance of fresh produce, the burgeoning obesity crisis in the UK, as well as “spending the last 10 years listening to distraught clients wishing they could sell more produce”.
“Now we’ve got the anecdotes, the pictures, and the connections, it’s the next stage that’s going to be really interesting,” he explains, before reeling off a spiral of plans that would have a full PR agency flat out, nevermind MacGillivray’s current team of one.
“We want to create a quarter of a million books that we will give to schools for free, to start the momentum. We need about £40-50,000 for the design and publication,” he says, adding that crowdfunding and sponsorship from produce firms will help foot the bill.
“For the filming, we’ve primed some of the companies we saw in Africa that there’s a possibility we might come back and film. I’m trying to get round how we include the veg element – we didn’t call it the Great Veg Adventure because it doesn’t sound as exciting. But it is going to encompass UK and overseas fruit and veg.”
He imagines a similar rollout to blogger Joe Wicks’ (AKA The Body Coach) book and online empire, only briefly reflecting on the sheer amount of work it must entail. “It’s a bit like organising this trip – just go with it and it will all fall into place, with lots of speed bumps along the way, but that’s part of the fun,” he says. “In six months time I will have two businesses, I will have this, and the recruitment business, so it’s just going to be a juggling act.”
MacGillivray is a big believer in being disruptive as a way of engaging children with the huge nutrition and enjoyment benefits of eating fruit and veg – a view it’s easy to share once you see the headaches and bureaucracy involved in any government-led healthy eating policy or campaign. The Great Fruit Adventure has almost shifted to having two audiences – the African children MacGillivray and trip partner Gareth Jones met at schools across the continent, where urbanisation and a lack of interest in agriculture is one of the biggest problems, and the UK children – who face a barrage of junk food and energy drink marketing and lack excitement about eating simple, healthy fruit and veg.
Of course, MacGillivray is undaunted by the multiple angles, and says he wants to set up farm competitions at the schools he visited in Africa to promote interest in agriculture as a career.
“If I could do 20 theatre tours before the end of this year, that’s 20,000 kids – what an influence that could have. If we could do that tour in the States, in Europe, in Australia, in Africa where they’ve already requested it. We’ve only just scratched the surface,” he says.
Pie in the sky? Perhaps, concedes MacGillivray, but no one could doubt there are many more miles in this tank.
A trip to remember...
“We had such a range of temperatures, from -1 in Spain to 45 in South Africa. In Ghana we got invited to see the British High Commissioner, and we were late because the traffic in Akkra is appalling, and we were hitting 42 degrees in the city centre. We bowled in absolutely drenched. He looked us up and down, no doubt thinking ‘oh God, who are you two?’ He came out and had his picture with our two bikes and filled out our trip book.”
“There were so many highlights, including being adopted by the Westfalia helicopter spray pilot in South Africa, who took us on a 45-minute aerial tour of the estate, and did some dummy spray runs. One afternoon we were at the guesthouse that we stayed, and we heard a helicopter coming in – there was Eugene landed on the guesthouse green! He ran over to us, and said: ‘Send me a text because I want to come out with you on the bikes’, then flew off again.”
“We visited one of the schools close to Blue Skies in Ghana. The kids were all lined up, and I do my bit about the trip. At the end of it I said: ‘Children, I’ve agreed with your headmistress that she is going to take my place – she’s going to go down to Cape Town, and I’m going to be your new headmaster’. I’m handing my keys to the headmistress, and lo and behold, she grabs them, runs to the bikes. All the kids and teachers break rank because this is hysterical. After about five minutes, I go to get the helmet off and what happens next? Her wig comes off, in front of these 500 kids.”
“Crossing 15 borders we had lots of issues in the way of administration. The border between Morocco and Mauritania includes 2km of No Man’s Land. At one point the road disappeared, and Gareth said it was because there is a minefield. ‘What do you mean there is a minefield?’ Then you see the UN trucks. ‘Oh it’s a war zone,’ he says. So it’s a war zone and a minefield.“
“At a border crossing in Ghana, the security told us there was a problem with our bike visas. I was thinking I was going to have to bribe him, until he said: ‘Let me ride your motorbike’. So I slipped the keys under the glass thinking it was a joke, and he was gone. Triumph had lent us the bikes for the trip, and I was thinking I’ve just sent a police officer off on a €15,000 bike that doesn’t belong to me. Two minutes later he comes shooting back over, a far better rider than me. We go back into the office and he stamped all our visas immediately.”
