As one of the stars of TV's Survivor programme, retired Navy Seal Rudy Boesch is no stranger to being sent on missions to isolated islands.

The former Navy Seal, who endured enemy fire in 45 missions in Vietnam, will be trying to save lives rather than take them as he co-hosts the Council Partners Telethon tonight to raise money to combat drug addiction.

Rudy told The Royal Gazette: “It's for a good cause and it's a five-day vacation too.”

Telethon producer Joanne MacPhee of the Council Partners said: “We needed star power - at first he wasn't available but they rearranged his schedule so he could come and join us.”

Rudy said: “I like Bermuda. I was here with the navy a long time ago when they had the bases here, in the 1950s I think.

“I was a second class petty officer in an underwater demolition team on a destroyer escort ship.”

Asked about whether the US should have paid for the environmental damage at Bermuda's former baselands he said: “They do clean-ups in the US so I don't see why not. “Every base has pollution because years ago people didn't worry about it.”

Even tiny Bermuda is large compared to the South China Sea island which made him famous on TV. “The island we were on was six square miles.”

Seventy-four-year-old Rudy had to swim two miles just to reach the Survivor island.

“I should have won it but I came in third place. I was hanging from a pole, I dozed as I was standing up and I slipped off.

“But if I had won the million dollars Uncle Sam would have taken half of it.”

Rudy also made a name for himself with his less than liberal views about a fellow contestant who is homosexual.

“That's what makes the show, if everyone got along no one would watch it.”

Rudy is currently on TV as camp commander on Combat Missions, which pits former elite troops on dangerous escapades.

Rudy will be dipping his toes in Bermuda's safer waters during his stay - swimming was very much part of his life as he planted explosives underwater to blow up Vietcong personnel and targets forty years ago.

“We did nearly everything at night, you didn't see much. You could go back in the day time and not know it.”

However, once his team were spotted the night would illuminated by tracer bullets - green for the enemy, red for the US forces.

“There were snakes and stuff in the water but that was the very least of your worries.

“Most times we were blowing things up, sometimes you would get intelligence about people to capture, hoping to get information from them.”

Sometimes the one guy they were hoping to pick up turned up out to be a patrol team of 50 and Rudy's six-man unit had to beat a hasty retreat. “You learn to make decisions, you can't wait around. It's just the kind of life I like, something different. One day you are making a parachute jump, the next you are swimming underwater. I enjoyed it.

“I had a good wife who took care of the kids when I was gone.

“In the seal team you get a call at two o' clock in the morning, you go right in, you might leave the base four hours later and be gone for three months. She doesn't know where you went.”

No wonder that long-suffering Marge, who is accompanying him this time, is enjoying his latest adventure.

Rudy will be hosting Telethon 2002 tonight with Austin Warner Jr on ZFB at 7.30 p.m.