Stripped of all mod-cons and luxuries including smartphones and bank cards, the pairs of celebrities had to rely on their skills, hard work and the kindness of strangers to succeed with a limited budget.
After his triupmh, Mills said he was “speechless”.
Broadcaster Jeff Brazier and his son Freddy, and model Kelly Brook and her husband Jeremy Parisi finished the race the day after, coming third and fourth respectively.
Mills and Vaughan realised they had won when they opened the guest book in Frutillar, leading them to jump up and down and shout “oh my god, we did it”.
Speaking of the victory, Mills said: “Speechless, when you open that book, and there are no other names in it – there’s no other feeling like it.
“I can confirm it’s the best feeling ever.
“It’s been exhilarating, it’s been tough, it’s been so frustrating at times, but we’ve been there for each other, the good, the bad, the ups and downs.
“It just proves we’re a great team – a winning team.”
The pair began the final leg in third place – but with just 39 minutes between the teams, the competition was wide open.
They decided to toss a coin to decide which route they would travel across the Andes to reach the finish line, with tails making them continue down through Argentina to San Salvador, and onwards to Mendoza.
Vaughan, who works as a producer, added: “I’m just glad we flipped the coin.
“To have a great experience and win, it’s just the best.”
During a ride in a cable car up San Cristobal Hill in Chile, Mills told Vaughan, who was his fiancé at the time, that he had been “quite caught up with work” at the start of the show and had now “learned to spend more time for just you and me”, before adding “I don’t want it to be over now”.
Since the winners were crowned on Wednesday night, viewers have taken to X, sharing their thoughts on the latest series and Mills’ victory.
One posted: “So so happy you [Scott] won. Have loved watching you, all the couples have been great and all made this a really terrific series, just loved every minute. The only show I put my crochet down for. Love you, bye xx”
Another wrote: “Well chuffed for you & Sam. Brilliant series and all of you from participants to behind the scenes should be really proud. Such a great show! It’s so made me wanna explore South America @JeffBrazier what an amazing dad. Massive well done to all of you!
“Yay! I was so happy that you two won. You were great to watch,” this person commented.
The BBC even got a shoutout from fans, as one complimented: “The BBC has done a wonderful job for tourism in South America. Well done Scott Mills.”
This account claims the series was the “best so far”, adding: “So happy that you guys won. What a fantastic series, the best so far and such stunning scenery.”
BBC One’s Celebrity Race Across the World reached its thrilling conclusion tonight (WEDS) with Radio 2 host Scott Mills and his husband (then fiancé) Sam, becoming the first to reach the final checkpoint and be crowned the winning team.
In a nail-biting final that saw only two teams in with a chance of finishing first, Scott Mills and Sam Vaughan were the first to make the climb up Osorno Volcano in Frutillar, Chile. Actor Kola Bokinni and his cousin Mary Ellen Moriarty followed 2 hours 20 minutes behind, putting them in second place, while Broadcaster Jeff Brazier and his son Freddy Brazier and Broadcaster Kelly Brook and her husband Jeremy Parisi came in the following day, finishing third and fourth respectively.
After opening the guest book to discover they had reached Frutillar in first place, the pair jumped up and down shouting ‘oh my God, we did it’, before embracing each other, overcome with emotion.
Reflecting on their victory, which saw them race 12,500 km from the Amazon Rainforest, all the way to the Andes, Scott said: “Speechless. When you open that book, and there are no other names in it – there’s no other feeling like it.”
Sam added laughing: “I’m just glad we flipped the coin!”
He continued: “To have a great experience and win, it’s just the best.”
Scott added: “I can confirm it’s the best feeling ever.” Still marvelling at their win, Sam continues: “we actually won” whilst Scott wipes away tears that he blames on the ‘cold air’.
Looking back at their time in the race, Scott says: “it’s been exhilarating, it’s been tough, it’s been so frustrating at times, but we’ve been there for each other, the good, the bad, the ups and downs. It just proves we’re a great team – a winning team.”
Following their arrival at the guest book, Kola and Mary Ellen are elated with Kola saying: “we came second Mary, I’m so pleased with that” before adding “this has been one of the best experiences of my life.”
With the remaining two teams arriving the day after, Jeff and Freddy reach the checkpoint in third place with Freddy saying: “We didn’t come first, we didn’t need to come first. We finished the race and we’ve done it together. Father and son, I mean what a duo.”
Finishing in fourth place, Kelly and Jeremy are happy to have finished with Kelly saying: “it means everything to finish. Jeremy wanted to win, I just wanted to finish. To be honest we came last so I feel like we should have had a jolly from day one, it wouldn’t have made any difference!”
Scott and Sam began the final leg in third place, but with just 39 minutes between all the teams, it was everyone’s race to play for. Leaving the fifth checkpoint in Tilcara, the teams had a mighty 2,750km to traverse across the Andes to reach the finish line in Frutillar in Chile. Known for their indecisiveness, Scott and Sam decided to toss a coin to determine which route they would travel – heads, cross the border to Chile early, or tails, continue down through Argentina. The pair flipped tails, leaving Tilcara to travel through Argentina to San Salvador and onwards to Mendoza.
Their journey got off to a shaky start, when due to the Easter holidays, queues were huge and tickets at a premium. Told that the 1.15pm bus was sold out, Scott and Sam faced a potential 9 hour wait at the bus station, a delay that could have cost them the race. Determined to find a way to stay in the running, Sam checked again and found more tickets had been released meaning they could leave on a bus with the other teams.
The second team to cross the border into Chile, Scott and Sam travelled 360km west from Mendoza to Santiago, the capital city of Chile. Travelling on one of the worlds windiest roads, consisting of a steep series of continuous switchbacks, the scenery was jaw-dropping. On reaching Santiago and booking an overnight bus to Frutillar, Scott and Sam were nervous about the budget, so took on one final job to top up their funds, making a Chilean speciality, ‘Completo’.
During a ride in a cable car up San Cristóbal Hill, Scott reflected to Sam on his experience during the race, saying: “at the start of this I think I was quite caught up with work, and I think I’ve learnt to spend more time for just you and me. I don’t want it to be over now.”
Having chosen to cross into Chile early and travel the desert route, Kola and Mary Ellen arrived in Santiago, and arranged an overnight bus to Frutillar, alongside Scott and Sam.
Meanwhile Jeff and Freddy got caught in terrible traffic congestion with were diverted to a smaller city, Rancagua south of the Chilean capital - leaving them with limited choice on how to travel onwards to Frutillar and therefore taking them out of contention to win the race.
Kelly and Jeremy were the only team to venture towards Patagonia and cross the Andes in the south, but ran into problems finding connections. A broken-down bus pushed them hours behind their opponents, and a closed border meant no onward travel, meaning the married couple had to bed down for the night and come to terms with arriving a day later than the others.
In the most epic race to the finish line in Race Across the World history, Scott and Sam and Kola and Mary Ellen’s GPS tracker directed them to the Teatro del Lago where they were instructed to take a boat or any vehicle 25 miles to Ensenada.
In a last-ditch attempt to secure the win, Scott and Sam took a boat, meanwhile Kola and Mary Ellen secured a lift from a taxi.
At the beach in Ensenada, the teams were told to make their way to the base camp of the majestic Osorno Volcano where there final instruction was to make their way, either by cable car, or on foot to the Chilean flag where they would be greeted by the finish line.
They have successfully reached the finish line without the use of air travel or any trappings of modern-day life. Stripped of all mod-cons and all luxuries they have had to rely on their skills, cunning, ingenuity, and hard work in order to succeed. Without the use of bank cards, smartphones and a limited budget, extra money had to be earned along the way as well as calling upon the kindness of strangers to help them progress.
Catch up on all episodes of Celebrity Race Across the World on BBC iPlayer.
How does it feel to have won Celebrity Race Across the World?
Scott: It's ridiculous. It's bizarre. When we were on the top of the volcano, we had a hug and a little cry. People were telling us repeatedly that we had won, but I still could not compute it. I could not get it in my head. I couldn't process it.
Sam: When we got off the bus and ran across the bridge, we had our first instruction to get to the finish line. Scott said to me, ‘Well, there's no point running. We're last anyway’. Even at the very end of the race, we still had it in our heads that we were going to be towards the bottom. In our heads we still didn't think we were in with a chance of winning until we opened that book. It was so weird.
Scott: I was ‘negative Scott’ from the beginning. I didn’t think I was going to do well at this. Then we started doing well and Sam became Mr. Negative. I thought, ‘This is great. We're having a great time. We're doing brilliantly’. I went from negative to positive, and then Sam went negative, and then I went back down to negative. I do actually remember saying to him, ‘There's no point in running, Sam, we’ve lost’.
Can you sum up the experience?
Sam: It was the best thing I've ever done. I've learned so much about myself, about Scott and about the world in the last 30 days than I have in the 30 plus years I’ve been on this planet. I've seen so much of South America and I still can't believe what we've done and achieved.
Scott: I thought I knew a lot about the world, but I didn’t know as much as I thought I did. It was exhilarating, inspiring and exhausting.
It’s made Sam and I’s relationship even stronger. I knew that Sam was the one but this whole experience made me absolutely realise without a shadow of a doubt that he was the one. We might never have this amount of time again when we are absolutely disconnected from the world. I very much doubt that it will ever happen again in our lives. It will remain special forever.
Has this experience changed the way your travel in the future?
Scott: There have already been weekends since we filmed the show where I have left my phone. I'll just put it away in a drawer. We’re going away in October for our belated honeymoon. I've already told people like my agent, my mum, and people that I speak to regularly that I will not be on the phone all week. I did it for five weeks, and it was brilliant. We didn't even want our phones back when we were allowed to. We said, ‘Oh, actually, can we do it tomorrow’? We went from, ‘Oh my God, how are we going to live without our phones’? to ‘I don't really want it back now’. It was really bizarre, because you would think, after five weeks, the first thing you would say is, ‘Oh my gosh. Give me my phone’. We thought, ‘Let's have one more night where we can all just meet up and share our experiences and not be on our phones’. I'm so glad we did.
I've also realized that you don't need to spend a fortune when you go away. Even if we go for a quick city break, I book a really nice hotel, but you really don't need to.
On a holiday you would not get to go into people's homes. I think this show will make it more popular. I now think that in previous holidays, maybe we've missed a trick by not speaking as much to local people, being amongst them, or staying with them, because that is when you feel like you're having the authentic experience.
What advice would you give to future contestants taking part?
Scott: I want to put Rylan on the list immediately. Also Alison Hammond.
Sam: If you don't ask then you don't get so just approach everyone and just ask. Don't be scared to ask people, because when you're in a situation and you can't see a way out of it somebody there will help you. It happened to us loads of times. Back at home, we're used to people with their heads down looking at their phones. If you stop and ask people, people will spend the time to try and find a solution for you, to help you. I think my biggest thing would be to ask. Just ask everyone.
Sam: As soon as I got back to London, a tourist asked me at one of the tube stations how to get somewhere. I jumped on the train with them and mapped it out and told them where they needed to get off and how many stops, because I realised, a few weeks ago I was in that position, probably in Sao Paulo.
Also take a calculator, that’s one thing I regret.
Scott: We did take an old school alarm clock and that was an actual Godsend.
Sam: The crew don't wake you up so if you need to be up at five o'clock to get a bus at half five, you haven't got a phone to set your alarm. A calculator is important because when you're trying to convert money and trying to work out how much everything is, it’s very confusing. My notepad is full of my own mental arithmetic. One Real is $1 and I'd always refer to that, but if I had a calculator, that would’ve helped me.
Scott: The alarm clock was a stroke of genius. It was such a cheap alarm clock – an old school one with the bells on the top. When you're in that situation, you don't even know what day it is. The days just roll into one another. You don't know what date or day it is and you don't know what time it is, a lot of the time, and then you'll miss a bus or you'll miss your wake up time, which can put you so behind in the race. So having something with the time on it, is something I would highly recommend.
What’s the reaction been like from your Radio 2 listeners?
Scott: You get everyone that you speak to asking ‘who’s won’ followed by ‘no don’t tell me’ they want to know but they don’t want to spoil it, that’s a really common thing! The nation is obsessed with this show. I knew it was big but it is an absolute monster.
I’ve had so many messages from listeners saying it’s inspired them to go on a road trip of their own, obviously they are not going to race but I really think this show has opened up the world of travel to people, so many people have said to me I love the show so much that I am now going to go on my own adventure - how amazing is that!
People are so into the show and they do not miss a beat, things that I haven’t even noticed, I’ve had messages like how come so many of you are left handed, because they see us signing the book, people do not miss a trick!
