When 65DN interviewed Riku Rantala, things were up in the air. But now madcap travel series Madventures will hit the world stage.

TV-rights to the dare-devil travel show which sees Riku and his cameraman Tuomas Milonoff eat a potentially radioactive lunch in Ukraine and dance with cannibals in India – has been sold to the National Geographic Channel meaning that it will be broadcast in 189 countries around the world.

The channel will broadcast last Spring’s English-language series of Madventures, the intricacies of which Riku was quite open about when he spoke to 65DN.

‘It was a huge effort to speak English,’ said Riku. ‘You had to build the right language for the scene . . . so we had a script-writer to help us with that.’

However, when they were actually on their adventures Riku and Tuomas were on their own. 

In addition, the rights to the show have been sold to MTV in Russia, TV2 in Norway as well as channels in Poland, Hungary, Belgium, Israel and the UK. All in all, this will make Madventures the most widely distributed Finnish television programme ever.

Nevertheless, Riku is modest about his prospects financially on the back of the show.

‘You’re never going to get a huge amount of money doing a show like this,’ he told 65DN. ‘I could earn more working as a docker in Helsinki!’