Susan’s view to a thrill

HAVE you ever seen that clip of fearless Blue Peter presenter John Noakes scaling Nelson’s Column, back in the days before they invented health, safety and the laws of gravity?

If your memory doesn’t stretch back quite that far (it was 1977) you can find the footage in the BBC archive bit on YouTube.

But a word of warning. If, like me, you have absolutely no head for heights, to the point where even watching this kind of thing gives you the willies, you’re likely to find it extremely uncomfortable viewing. In fact, personally I’d go so far as to say it’s one of the maddest, most terrifying things that I’ve ever seen, with the obvious exception of the 2019 Labour manifesto.

The reason I’m mentioning it now is because there’s a scene in tonight’s episode of SUSAN CALMAN’S GRAND DAYS OUT (C5, 9pm) which has a not entirely dissimilar effect on me. Susan and her campervan are back in Cornwall, for a leisurely pootle along the coast, or along some of it, but in the gap between series one and series two of this programme she seems to have developed a Noakes-like fearlessness of her own, at least up to a point.

“There’s no such thing as ‘I can’t do it’!” she’s now insisting, presumably emboldened by the fact that she got through the first bunch of episodes of this series relatively unscathed.

Susan’s first port of call is the port (yes, funnily enough) of Charlestown, on Cornwall’s south coast, famously featured in BBC1’s Poldark (both the original series and the remake) as well as oodles of feature films.

There she meets a chap called Alex, who is the first mate of a lovely old 1930s schooner with a scarily tall mast.

And yes, you’ve guessed it, the scarily tall mast is something the newly fearless Susan decides she should climb to the top of.

“I’ve promised myself,” she tells him, “that I’ll do things I would never think I could do. Is there anything I could do up there?”

“Oh, yes, absolutely,” I’d be telling her if I were this Alex chap. “What you could do up there is fall off.Are you out of your mind?” But Alex says nothing of the sort. On the contrary, he’s more than happy to let her go ahead. His advice to her is simply to climb it “as you would a ladder”.

Susan has always struck me as more of a “wouldn’t climb a ladder for all the tea in China” kind of person, but it seems I’ve underestimated her.

Slowly, steadily, boldly she begins her ascent.Will she make it all the way to the top, more than 30ft up?

“The views,” promises Alex, who’s waiting for her up there, “are worth it.”

Bet they’re not.