Daily Mail

This tigress terrified the Bedouin . . . if only she could sort Brexit!

Ben Fogle: New Lives In The Wild ★★★★☆ Dave Gorman: Modern Life Is Goodish ★★☆☆☆

- CHRISTOPHE­R STEVENS

YOU don’t want to annoy Maryanne Stroud Gabbani. She’s one of those marvellous ladies who loves animals and fears nobody — sweet-natured as Doris Day, stubborn as Winston Churchill.

Marching into the marketplac­e near her farm on the outskirts of Cairo, in New Lives In The Wild (C5), she announced to the animal dealers in their dusty headdresse­s that she wished to buy a sheep.

The men scowled. They waved their arms at her. A white woman had no place here, they said. Then they caught the look in Maryanne’s eye, and sold her a sheep, sharpish. She even got a discount.

Maryanne, 67, is a Canadian expat, which is a pity. If she were British, we could hire her to head the Brexit talks. That would soon sort out Jean-Claude Juncker.

This was easily the best episode so far of Ben Fogle’s globe-trotting documentar­y, profiling eccentrics and hermits who live beyond civilisati­on. Maryanne was very different to the usual characters, the ones who buy a Pacific island or live by hunting bears in the Yukon.

She didn’t set out to scratch an existence in the North African dust. In the Nineties she and her husband, Egyptian businessma­n Diaa, lived in luxury, with their own yacht and private jet. But when Diaa was killed in a plane crash, Maryanne discovered he had been $250 million in debt . . . and she was now penniless.

This was not a story Maryanne was keen to tell. For days, whenever Ben asked about her past, he got ‘the look’ — the one that terrified the Bedouin. When he asked how she had resisted pressure to leave Egypt, she growled: ‘If you threaten me and tell me I have to do something, I’ll kill you first.’

So he cannily changed tack, and began asking about her animals instead. This was a sensitive ploy, a sign that Ben’s ability as an interviewe­r is growing deeper with each series. He won Maryanne’s trust, but he also discovered her vulnerable side.

Asking her about why humans made her angry: ‘I’m meaner than they are,’ she snarled. But turn the conversati­on to horses and dogs, and she became openly emotional. Her animals were not pets, she said — they were her therapists.

This wasn’t just a portrait of a fascinatin­g woman, it was a lesson in TV technique and how to unlock a personalit­y.

The comedian Dave Gorman might be a man it’s better not to cross either. The host of Modern Life Is Goodish (Dave channel) performs routines about everyday banalities, illustrate­d by graphs and charts.

His targets are usually mundane: this time, they included the feud between pop star Bobby G and his former bandmates in Bucks Fizz, and supermarke­t own- brand wheat biscuits.

But the show ended with a blistering attack on a minor showbiz journalist called Neil Sean, who had hosted an unofficial Dr Who DVD littered with errors.

Gorman didn’t criticise Mr Sean, he slaughtere­d him. He battered him to pulp. Even Emperor Ming the Merciless would have thought: ‘ Golly! That’s harsh.’

Wondering what triggered that, I looked for some history — and sure enough, Neil Sean has upset Gorman in the past.

After Sean was mildly mocked on a previous show, the journalist implied that the comic had somehow incited homophobic hatred against him.

obviously, that didn’t go down well.

Clearly, you pick a fight with Mr Gorman at your peril. So, Dave, if you’re reading this, don’t take it the wrong way. It’s just constructi­ve criticism.

FUNDRAISER OF THE MONTH: Celebrity Hunted (C4) has been plain ludicrous. I can’t believe in any of the CCTV or phone tracking. But it’s raised a fortune for Stand Up To Cancer — so well done to all those involved.

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