The white knight ... Simon Reeve and his medley of identical shirts.

Writer and broadcaster Simon Reeve has long taken his travels to some of the less inviting nations on the planet, producing some superb, compelling television in his BBC series Meet the Stans and Places That Don't Exist. This weekend he returns to the screens in a new series, Equator, in which he follows the equator through such inhospitable lands as Gabon and the Democratic Republic of Congo, as well as the more inviting Sumatra, Galapagos and Brazil.

While Reeve described his work as "a bit like going away with a few mates and making a video diary" in a Guardian Unlimited interview, his trips have taken in surreal encounters with everyone from mercenaries to presidents to remote tribesmen. Anyone could have such adventures, he modestly claimed.

But as the shots (above) from his new series show, one crucial item for anyone hoping to follow in his footsteps, whether on a Brazilian beach or in the Indonesian rainforest, whether hobnobbing with army units in Colombia or hanging out with tribesman in Borneo, is a good shirt.

Or more precisely, and worryingly, just the one shirt. When did it ever get washed?

Reeve hastens to set the record straight. "They are different shirts. Identical, but different." He claims to have had six of the cream linen shirts made in Bangkok years ago for a fiver each.

"I don't go for all these hi-tech fabrics that make you look like a jungle warrior," he says. His shirt is, he says, ideal for sweaty places when you can be in the jungle one moment and meet a mayor or a president the next. "You have to find some sort of balance between looking like an explorer and looking vaguely smart."

Various mishaps have, alas, left several of his shirts bloodied and torn and only two now remain. Although Reeve admits to not having an extensive wardrobe, fortunately for him - and acquaintances - he says they "haven't been required in London".

• Equator with Simon Reeve starts on Sunday 27 August at 9pm on BBC2.