Nick casts his river spell
STARTING on Channel 5 tonight we have THE MIGHTY MISSISSIPPI WITH NICK KNOWLES (9pm). I’m excited about this for a number of reasons. Specifically, three. The first is that I always enjoy Nick’s travel shows.
They’re fun, without forgetting to be informative.
And they’re informative, without forgetting to be fun.
The second is that I rather like Nick himself.
While he’s not the most fashionable of TV presenters (so that’s a plus point for starters), he has an infectious enthusiasm. Also, he doesn’t take himself too seriously. Remember when Holly and Dec kept cruelly mocking his skimpy red Speedos on I’m A Celebrity series 18?
“Bad show!” I yelled at my television (referring to their meanness, not to I’m A Celebrity series 18, although I guess I may have subconsciously meant both). Nick wasn’t remotely rattled. Reason three for welcoming The Mighty Mississippi With Nick Knowles is it’s giving me an excuse to write “Mississippi” (which, as I’m sure you’ll have noted, I’ve already done three times).
This may strike you as an odd thing to get excited about, but I went to so much trouble at school to learn how to spell that fiendishly tricky word – Em Eye Double-Ess Eye Double-Ess Eye Double-Pea Eye! – only to have found frustratingly few opportunities to show off this skill in real life.
Mind you, schools teach lots of stuff that turns out to be of little practical use. Mine even taught German. This latest adventure of Nick’s is a two-parter, taking him from Minneapolis to New Orleans.
For much of it, he’s not on the water itself – he starts in a helicopter, to get a sense of the river’s vastness – but tracing its route, the Mississippi being “the spine of America”.
His treats in this first show include a Harley-Davidson ride with a gang of motorbiking lawyers – why not, eh?.
Then comes a lesson in how to water-ski (the Mississippi is where water-skiing was invented), which he turns out to be amusingly rubbish at.
Along the way, he also gets a few sobering history lessons, most notably at a museum in Missouri, dedicated to documenting the experiences of enslaved people.
Nick ends this leg with his very first visit to a baseball match, as a guest of the St Louis Cardinals.
He’s even introduced to the 46,000 crowd having been granted the honour of stepping out to throw a ceremonial first pitch.
“British TV personality Nick Knowles!” cries the stadium announcer, clarifying his identity for the benefit of what I’d guess is roughly 45,999 of them.
“Ah, the guy with the scarlet budgie smugglers!” do I hear a lone voice cry?