JB’s cool day at the zoo

ADMITTEDLY, I can offer you no reliable statistics to back this up (well, I probably could, I’d just rather you took my word for it and saved me the effort), but it seems there are more animal-themed programmes on TV than ever before.

I suppose in one sense this is inevitable given there are now several billion channels with airtime to fill. But even if we consider just the channels that people actually watch, we do seem to have an unprecedented number of such shows nowadays, albeit across a broad spectrum, from BBC1’s Blue Planet II to Channel 5’s Kittens Doing Very Funny Stuff Like Playing Ping-Pong.

To be fair to Channel 5, they also make proper animal programmes with titles that I haven’t just made up in a lame attempt to be amusing.

There’s one of those starting tonight. It’s called BIG WEEK AT THE ZOO (Channel 5, 8pm), it’s going out nightly till Friday, and it’s celebrating all the fine work Britain’s zoos are doing from a conservation point of view.

Helen Skelton and Nick Baker are our main hosts, and Yorkshire Wildlife Park near Doncaster is the show’s base, but over the course of the week there’ll also be input from elsewhere, brought to us by other well-known TV faces. So tonight for example, the creatures at Chessington Zoo in Surrey are getting a visit from JB Gill.

(“Sorry, are we meant to know who the heck JB Gill is?”, the Sumatran tigers are muttering. To which the southern white rhino, infinitely more clued-up, replies: “He’s that one out of JLS, you ninnies. Came second on The X Factor in 2008.”)

JB’s Chessington visit was actually filmed when the weather was particularly hot, so he is set the task of helping keep the animals cool.

“We’ve been making some really inventive smoothies for the spider monkeys and gorillas,” he tells us, rather proudly. “We’ve used papaya, grape, plum, even mint.”

JB also joins keeper Nicole in the penguin enclosure. Nicole has come armed with a bottle of Ambre Solaire. “Want some suncream, babe?” she asks one of the penguins.

“Not particularly, since you ask,” the penguin’s body language seems to be saying. But it turns out the creature doesn’t have much say in the matter.

Elsewhere tonight, paralympian sprint champion Jonnie Peacock is exploring his roots in the last in the current series of WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? (BBC1, 9pm). Jonnie is particularly keen to learn more about his grandfather on his mum’s side – also called Johnnie, but with an H – from whom it seems he may have inherited some of his sporting flair. But he’s somewhat surprised to discover the full extent of Johnnie’s talents, and the circumstances that prevented him from exploiting them to the full. The records show that young Johnnie was a prolific goalscorer for his local amateur side, and attracted the attention of Leeds United. When the scout from Leeds arrived, however, Johnnie’s dad turned him away, insisting his son should focus instead on his painting and decorating apprenticeship.