What Mr Wonky Horn can teach alpha males like Jeremy Clarkson
What a catastrophe this new ask the host lifeline is turning out to be on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? — as Jeremy Clarkson wrecks the hopes of one contestant after another with his flaky general knowledge.
First he cost policewoman Sarah £7,000 when he couldn’t help her with a question about Belgian artist Rene Magritte. More disastrous still, beekeeper Lynn crashed from £32,000 to £1,000 when Clarkson couldn’t name the previous Foreign Secretary [ before amber Rudd resigned], Philip hammond.
‘Just go for it,’ he urged cheerfully on tuesday night. ‘I don’t think it’s hammond. I’d be torn between William hague and Liam Fox. Everybody at home is willing you to go ahead and gamble, take a punt.’
that punt cost Lynn £31,000, after she answered ‘hague’. Ouch!
ask the host must have seemed a brilliant wheeze when the Millionaire revamp was planned. Maybe it could work, if Egghead and Brain Of Britain champ Kevin ashman were the quizmaster.
Clarkson’s problem is that he hurls himself at questions, as if he can intimidate the answers into revealing themselves.
that’s alpha males for you. they can’t imagine losing.
Such arrogance hands a hefty advantage to their slighter, smarter rivals — as we saw on The Secret Life Of The Zoo (C4). In the bug tank, macho hercules beetles were doing battle for the attentions of a newly hatched female, athena.
they wielded their lances, inchlong thorns protruding from their heads, and fought so viciously that they threatened to rip each other in two.
Meanwhile, a beetle with a missing leg and a misshapen spear, nicknamed Mr Wonky horn by the keepers, sidled up to athena, wooed her with a little goofy beetle charm, and set about making whoopee. So much for alpha males.
Part of the pleasure of this endlessly interesting animal documentary is seeing the dedication of the staff.
Keeping a degree of emotional detachment must be painful, but it’s important that the zoo’s denizens are never treated as pets.
Penguin keeper andy looked and sounded devastated when an outbreak of avian malaria swept through his colony, killing almost half the birds — including an old female called Spike, who had been with her mate Rudd for 17 years. Rudd was so arthritic and ancient that he couldn’t dive for his dinner. But he still got his fill, by intercepting the fish bucket at the entrance to the enclosure each morning. Once again, brains beat brawn.
Dairy farmer Peter was content to let his easygoing sense of humour do the work on Love In The Countryside (BBC2). this gossipy format, following eight lonely men and women in search of rural romance, has nothing educational about it: fronted by DJ Sara Cox, it belongs on Channel Five, not among the Beeb’s grownup arts and business documentaries. But it’s agreeable viewing, because all the farmers are shy and selfeffacing characters, not the musclebound braggarts you usually see on dating shows.
Peter, a true Yorkshireman, gathered his three dates in the kitchen and promised to treat them just as he does his cows: ‘If I keep you happy, you won’t be a lot of bother — but once the tide turns . . .’ he pulled a worried face, plainly a man who knew the trouble a moody Friesian can cause.
all the women fell for him, even Fake tan Fran, a city girl who’d barely set foot in a Wellington boot before. Peter had her giggling till she swooned. alpha males, what do they know?