TRAVEL AGENTS: Celebrity tour guides

As Martin Clunes continues his tour of Islands Of Australia (8pm, ITV), we look at some other famous faces who have taken us on global adventures…

Alan Whicker The daddy of celebrity travel guides presented the globetrotting Whicker’s World from 1959 to 1994. The series saw the presenter shining a light on interesting stories from around the world. Though episodes were mainly self-contained, there were regular series of episodes devoted to one particular location. These included specials dedicated to America, Australia, India and a cruise on the QE2. Michael Palin Perhaps the most popular of them all, the former Python carved out a new career for himself as the face of several global adventures. For his first, he travelled in the footsteps of Phileas Fogg for Around The World In 80 Days (1989). He followed that up with landmark series such as Pole To Pole (1992), Full Circle (1997), Sahara (2002) and Brazil (2012). Joanna Lumley In November, a senior ITV executive said that she believed the public had grown tired of ‘spoilt celebrities getting an all-expenses-paid trip’ in the name of entertainment. She did make one exception: the absolutely fabulous Joanna Lumley, whose first foreign assignment was way back in 1991 when she travelled to Borneo for In Search Of The White

Rajahs. She has more recently been a popular guide on ITV, presenting films on Japan, the Nile and Greece.