Sorry Zoe, but all this emotion is enough to make a chap switch off
Zoe Ball is a hugger. She never shakes a stranger’s hand when she can throw both arms around them, squeezing and clutching their ribs, sobbing ‘Darling!’ and ‘My love!’
Zoe Ball’s Hardest Road Home (BBC1) was a chronicle of her laudable campaign to raise funds for Sport Relief and highlight the dangers of depression, particularly in men. Cycling 250 miles in a week, from her birthplace in Blackpool to her home in Brighton, she was utterly wrung out by the end, both physically and mentally. This woman doesn’t hold back.
But the primary lesson it instilled in me was that, if you ever bump in to Zoe and don’t want all the breath squished out of your lungs, the safest thing is to give her a friendly wave from across the room and retreat.
This was highly emotional television, a constant cascade of tears and confessional interviews to camera. Perversely, there’s nothing more likely to deter its target audience from watching.
The message here was for men, urging them not to bottle up their feelings, but few things put a chap off his tea more than an hour of heartfelt feelings.
one woman cheering from the roadside told the cameras that men would be healthier if they talked constantly — ‘like women’. any married man knows, of course, that this is impossible: one of you has to do the listening.
Final proof that this was not telly devised for a male audience came at the end of Zoe’s third day, when she checked into a hotel in Stratford-upon-avon to find the professional dancers from Strictly shimmying through the lobby to lift her spirits.
other famous pals turned up to give her a boost, including liverpool comic John Bishop and her own father Johnny Ball, who at 79 appears to have even more energy than his daughter: ‘Why didn’t they give you a tandem?’ he cried. ‘I’d have come with you!’
as well as the two-wheeled lycra marathon, Zoe found time to talk with earnest rawness about the death of her boyfriend, Billy, last year. Though he could be the life and soul of any party, he was also prone to deep bouts of depression: just how deep, no one knew until he killed himself.
This was TV from the heart, and anything Zoe can do in her wildly extrovert way to draw attention to mental illness has to be applauded. For anyone less prone to full-body hugs, a gentler solution to the blues could be found in Make! Craft Britain (BBC4).
The title, apparently sewn together from random scraps of the dictionary, reflected the tone of the show. Complete amateurs were encouraged to work with whatever materials they had to hand to create something offbeat and personal.
With a bag of unwashed sheep’s fleece, scraps of felt and some balls of knotted wool from a charity shop, a group of crafters in Bamburgh, beside the North Sea, set about making tapestry pictures on circlets of canvas. The camera watched their faces, silent studies in concentration, while a gentle soundtrack of cello and piano played.
Television doesn’t come more soothing. The most excitement we saw came from a Japanese lady who missed the cherry blossom of her home.
She beamed in delight as she held up a pink ball of origami, created to assuage her homesickness.
Charity bike rides are all very well for cheering us up, but never underestimate the happy satisfaction of making something on your own.
CATCHPHRASE OF THE NIGHT: Shane Richie in a ludicrous wig was having a whale of a time in Benidorm (ITV) as a washed-up TV entertainer, inanely parroting: ‘Who loves you? Get off my grass!’ If that’s not a real game show slogan, it should be.