Southgate sheds his waistcoat for a hike with Bear
England manager passed the World Cup test but TV adventurer Grylls provides a whole new challenge, writes Alan Tyers
Will he be able to find the courage to rope down 100ft cliffs? Of course he will
Many a previous England manager might have fancied throwing himself off a cliff: Gareth Southgate is bearing up to the impossible job sufficiently well that he engages the assistance of a sturdy abseil rope to make his way down a Dartmoor rock face.
It is one of several highlights in a short, sweet little adventure documentary that finds everyone’s favourite waistcoat-wearer going for an extreme hike with the affable television adventurer Bear Grylls.
Coming up on ITV this Thursday, Southgate is challenged to a 28-mile yomp around the desolate Devon moor, famously the training ground for generations of Royal Marine commandos.
Southgate’s grandfather was one such, and it is from grandad, he says, that he learnt the virtues of preparation, taking care of the details, respect for yourself and the people you represent, professionalism, and polishing his shoes a lot.
Will he be able to find within himself the courage to rope down 100-foot cliffs, face down his fears to leap into the unknown, make calm decisions under pressure and do it all with good grace, determination and a self-deprecating wit?
Of course he will. This is Southgate, the man who got England to play football pretty well, the man who managed to make the country feel warm about their national team again. By
the way, that story, already passed into legend, is the subject of another programme on ITV this week, a Wednesday doc called World Cup: Summer Of Love.
That one is being edited up until the last moment and was thus unavailable for preview, so I am unable to speak to its merit or otherwise, but I would be neglectful if I did not alert you that the press materials contain the following health warning: “The programme is complemented by the insights of those who followed their journey back home, including Piers Morgan.”
If there were any justice, Grylls would be taking Morgan to Dartmoor, and leaving him there, but we are where we are and I do not think that it is a spoiler to say that the England manager makes it back in one piece, a bit older and even a bit wiser than when he started.
The interest with the Southgate story, perhaps, will be what happens if his England side regress to the mean. World Cup semi-finals and thrilling victories over mighty Spain in semicompetitive fixtures have been 2018’s sporting delights (with apologies to readers in other parts of the nation). But any England manager is only ever a couple of results away from the press pack turning, from midfielders giving the ball away and goalies undone by bobbles, from an angry and frustrated nation venting its spleen.
Surely Southgate will face that bravely and calmly, too, when it comes. I hope so. Grylls, another thoroughly good egg, gets the measure of the man: “Gareth has known what it is to succeed and also what it is to fail. That gives him great resilience but also great compassion.”
Just so. Would that there were more like him in our key institutions.
World Cup: Summer of Love (Wed, 9pm, ITV) Bear’s Mission with Gareth Southgate (Thur, 9pm, ITV)