Slice of putrid shark? Alas, it’s the host’s knowledge that’s rotten . . .
TO A dedicated foodie, no flavour should be too revolting to describe. Game show host Alexander Armstrong fancies himself as a man with an educated palate, so he treated rotting shark as a challenge.
A fisherman named Odin carved off a slice for him, on his adventures in Iceland with Alexander Armstrong (C5). it had the consistency of congealed lard, with a leather rind.
‘Starts fishy,’ Xander announced. That was unimaginative, but his tastebuds were still in shock. As his eyes began to water, he compared the pungency to Stilton.
‘Then it pulls a bit of a hairpin bend into ammonium,’ he gasped. ‘Very good for indigestion, i should think. And a lingering, fatty aftertaste.’
The dish was fermented Greenland shark, a Viking delicacy. Poisonous if eaten untreated, the meat is left to putrefy for five weeks and then dried. you have to feel for the Greenland shark. it spends millions of years evolving to be completely inedible, and then humans start eating it precisely because it tastes so horrible.
Odin showed Xander a shark he caught that day. What the presenter didn’t tell us is that these fish live longer than any other vertebrate on earth. They grow a single centimetre per year, and this one was at least three metres long — that’s 300 years. That shark was probably in its 60s at the time of the French revolution. Surely this is more interesting than knowing how disgusting it tastes.
Informative voiceovers aren’t Xander’s strong suit. He’s a cheery companion but not a knowledgable one. Confronted with new experiences, he rarely asks questions but says ‘Wow!’ a lot.
He’s like a chap pottering around an exhibition, gazing for a few moments at a display he doesn’t understand and then moving on.
A nice icelandic lady gave him a woolly sweater. ‘Knitting is a national pastime,’ he told us, as though it was an alien art to the British. He had a go himself, discovered it was quite tricky and chucked it in.
Then he met a singing farmer. Apparently iceland’s sheep respond well to musical shepherds, though Xander didn’t want to know more.
The farmer invited him to join a local choir and asked whether he could sing. ‘i can get by,’ huffed the tourist, trying to hide his vexation that anyone could be unaware of his no 1 classical album, A year Of Songs.
His high point was a whale watching voyage. Though they eventually showed up, the whales were slow to arrive. Xander should have taken eba the orca dog with him. This mixed-breed terrier is trained to sniff out whale poo on the surface of the ocean.
She rides on the prow of the boat with scientists off the Pacific coast of Canada and the U.S. to find killer whale droppings. researchers analyse them to see what the orcas are eating.
Eba’s pooper-scoop voyages supplied just one story in a globetrotting compendium of short items on Restoring The Earth: The Age Of Nature (BBC4). We visited Montana, where wolves are keeping bison in check but also aggravating cowboys.
in China, a professor with a passion for fireflies has discovered a way to stop farmers from spraying paddy fields with insecticide: if they go organic they can charge higher prices for ‘firefly rice’.
each report was filled with gorgeous landscape shots, while the detail was explained neatly by Anna Friel’s narration.
These ten-minute tales could stand alone, as fillers between shows. The Beeb is trying to attract viewers raised on youTube videos — quickie science segments might be one answer.