Ice work if you can get it
CAN I let you into a secret if you promise not to tell? Good, I was hoping you’d say that.The secret is I’m occasionally a bit sceptical about certain types of TV programme. I know I disguise it remarkably well, and thank you for kindly saying so, but I’d be lying if I said there weren’t particular kinds of show which, from the moment I hear they’re in the pipeline, have me thinking: “Oh, good Lord, not this again…”
One such programme was FREEZE THE FEAR WITH WIM HOF, which starts tonight on BBC1 (9pm).The idea is that a bunch of celebrities are packed off to somewhere wild and forbidding, to be set all kinds of terrifying challenges that will test them to their limit, mentally and physically, and have them confronting their darkest fears.
Sounds familiar, right? My point exactly. It’s I’m An SAS Celebrity Pilgrim JumpWith Bear Grylls Or
Ant Thingummy Or One Of That Lot, isn’t it?
But, no, it turns out it isn’t. Oh, all right, it sort of is, but in a way which, on this early evidence at least, feels genuinely rather moving at times.
Dutchman Wim Hof, who looks like an Ice Age Fred Flintstone, is a veteran extreme athlete, famous for his ability to cope in freezing conditions. In fact, he thrives in them.
Wim insists the cold can make us happier, healthier and stronger, although I don’t suppose he’s ever watched Oldham Athletic at home on a Tuesday night in January.
“When you go into icy water everything stops,” he says – and while that’s precisely why I’m inclined to do no such thing, what he means is our everyday worries disappear. “The blood flow goes into the deeper realms of the brain,” is his explanation, “and there is serenity.”
The celebs who’ll need convincing of this – not least because the first challenge he sets them is to leap into an icy lake – are singer Alfie Boe, actress Tamzin Outhwaite, Strictly’s Dianne Buswell, footballer Chelcee Grimes, sports presenter Gabby Logan, weatherman Owain Wyn Evans, former Manchester United star Patrice Evra and rapper
Professor Green.And hosting this whole thing? HollyWilloughby and Lee Mack. Not the most obvious pairing, I grant you, but one of them does a fine line in empathy while the other supplies some nice gags. I’ll leave you to guess who does which.
Elsewhere, another famous bunch – Mo Farah, Motsi Mabuse, Ben Miller and Katherine Kelly – must brave the tent in THE GREAT CELEBRITY BAKE OFF FOR STAND UPTO CANCER (C4, 8pm).
Can they conquer their fears and, against impossible odds, find it within themselves to make meringue roulade?