I always imagined Alex Beresford would be thin-skinned and full of himself – Celebrity Race Across The World proves it
THAT’S the trouble with celebrities.
The ones you expect to hate usually turn out to be absolute sweethearts and the ones you want to love are often surly, arrogant, self-centred egomaniacs, like Ewan McGregor.
Take a bow then Alex Beresford, who I’d always imagined would be thin-skinned, prickly, vain, obsessive and full of himself to the point of almost being insufferable, away from his Good Morning Britain weather map.
But waddayaknow?
To my utter delight, it turns out, he’s exactly as I’d imagined.
Proof of this elusive pudding comes via BBC1’s Celebrity Race Across The World, a show I unashamedly love and missed more than just about anything, except the Australian jungle, when lockdown forced most decent television into a two-year hibernation.
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Fantastically wrong
The civilian version returned, in March, with a relatively underwhelming race across Canada, but it’s back on form again with the celebs and the most brilliantly simple format you can imagine.
Four groups of two (celeb plus a family member) must get from point A) Marrakech, in Morocco, to point B) Tromso, in Norway, via six random European checkpoints, on a budget of £1,947 without using aeroplanes or killing each other.
It’s a formidable bonding task that, for the most part, has brought out the best in the duos, who have been chosen with some care and attention.
The most impressive is either McFly’s Harry Judd and his adoring mum Emma or the indestructible double amputee F4 driver Billy Monger and his equally formidable sister Bonny, who have both clearly got the competitive edge over bone idle All Saints singer Melanie Blatt, who’s dawdling her way towards the Arctic circle with mother Helene.
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The grit in this oyster, though, is very much Alex Beresford, who gave us all a fair indication of what was to come, right at the start, when he sniffed the Marrakesh air and said: “I can really smell the horse manure.”
The viewers had got a fair whiff of it as well, by the end of this fraught episode, although it wasn’t stinging them quite as much as his sweet, long-suffering dad Noel who said, with some feeling: “Alex usually gets what he wants.”
He certainly does and the results are not great to behold, even if you try and ignore the fact Alex wears a baseball cap back to front and talks about himself in the third person: “This is me throwing off the old Alex because the thing is I’m quite wise.”
Rather alarmingly for someone who’s in a science-based job, weatherman Alex also believes he has the sixth sense, like Bruce Willis with an occluded front.
However, the glorious thing here is, he hasn’t and he’s not wise at all.
In fact, he’s fantastically wrong the whole time.
Train doors shut in his face, ferries are missed and whenever the route requires them to turn left, Alex insists they charge to the right.
Even more disturbingly, given his profession, he also seems to have little idea about time zones, yet always thinks he knows more than his dad, including the point when they reach Seville, where Noel worked for years and knows like the back of his hand. Why?
Born know-all
Well, Alex may have been a born know-all, but I’d like to put it down to the day job.
Time was, Britain only had about a dozen weathermen, who relied on a helium balloon and their grandad’s barometer for some really hit-and-miss forecasts.
Now, as others have pointed out, there are hundreds of them and they’re no longer weathermen, either.
Goodness me, no. They’re “meteorologists”, great harbingers of doom who cannot be contradicted because they’re all that stand between us and a fiery climate holocaust.
Presenters hang on their every solemn word as a result and on GMB they even ask Alex his lofty opinion on other stuff, like Harry and Meghan, which was why Piers Morgan took the huff.
He isn’t even the worst of them, either. That’d be Laura Tobin, the passive-aggressive queen of ITV’s end-of-the-world-is-nigh forecasts.
Hopefully, she’ll be seconded for the next series of CRATW, because I like to think Alex is learning a degree of humility here and certainly seemed to have piped down a bit on Wednesday’s episode.
If he does, then however much he benefits it’ll certainly be television’s slight loss.
Because, for sheer entertainment value, you’re not going to beat the episode two moment when, hundreds of miles behind the other contestants, on the ferry to Corsica, Alex leaned in conspiratorially towards Noel and said: “You know, like, since I was a kid, I’ve been able to sense things? Well I sense something or someone . . . ”
Me too, Alex.
I sense . . . an arse.
Unexpected morons in the bagging area
THE Finish Line, Roman Kemp: “What is the young of a penguin normally called?”
Paul: “A calf.”
Roman Kemp: “On what part of the body are garters usually worn?”
Tommy: “The face.”
Tipping Point, Ben Shephard: “Stated before the name of a member of the clergy, Rev is an abbreviation of which religious title?”
Elliott: “Pass.”
Ben Shephard: “Who was the US President when the Berlin Wall fell?”
Anu: “Lincoln.”
Random irritations
CHANNEL 4’s hopeless Partygate docudrama arriving with all the subtlety, skill and timing of a three-year-old Made In Chelsea repeat.
Strictly Come Dancing ditching Les Dennis, the one contestant who might’ve raised a regular laugh.
The American off-camera creep, Fisher Stevens, who keeps kissing David Beckham’s backside during the Netflix hagiography.
And the political parasites who run Football Focus showing us exactly where the beautiful game really lies in their list of priorities when it finished Saturday’s show with some free PR for Extinction Rebellion/Labour Party supporter Dale Vince.
So, please, cut the pretence about what’s going on here and just call it Focus.
Endure Ben? It's not fun
RIGHT at the start of Channel 5’s Endurance: Race To The Pole, Ben Fogle declared: “This isn’t just a couple of blokes mucking about in fancy dress.”
And immediately you knew, deep in your heart, that’s exactly what it was.
You also probably resigned yourself to the fact Ben, who fancies himself no end, would get his bare arse out at some point to try to relieve the boredom.
But Professor David Olusoga was on the other channel wearing his hurt expression, so you watched Ben and his mate Dwayne Fields trudge off in the Antarctic footsteps of Scott, Amundsen, Sir Ranulph Fiennes, Michael Palin and all those other tiresome sods who can’t leave this place well alone.
Along the way, commentary was provided by Ben himself, who didn’t make it clear whether he was referring to the adventure or the viewers when he said: “I’m beginning to wonder what it was that kept these men going.”
But, seeing as Professor David Olusoga was still muttering away on BBC2, I kept going, somehow powering through the moment where Ben and Dwayne spontaneously decided to get their bare arses out, right up until the final scene where they planted the flag and uttered the two most chilling words known to man.
“Next week . . . ”
NEXT WEEK?
Next week, in the immortal words of Captain Oates, I’m going outside and may be some time.
AND on Wednesday, TV Biz cheerfully reported that, on her forthcoming Alaskan survival series: “Sue Perkins will learn how to survive a bear attack.”
But let’s try and remain optimistic, shall we. It may be really hungry.
UNLESS you’re an obsessive fan, I’d think twice about committing yourself to all four parts of Netflix’s over-hyped Beckham series.
It adds nothing new, for me, beyond a lot of PR and a cracking anecdote about the real star of the show, Fergie, deliberately sabotaging the Beckhams’ honeymoon at Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber’s house in the South of France.
Victoria does, however, raise an important psychological and anatomical question roughly midway through episode two.
“What do you say when you’re sitting next to someone and 75,000 people have been singing that you take it up the a**e?”
Err, d’you need a cushion?
MEANWHILE, back on Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins, it was time for the hostage release task, where narrator Shaun Dooley very slowly set the scene: “The DS have separated Michelle Heaton from her team-mates and placed her in a derelict compound. Two locals are also being held hostage. To pass the task?”
They must hand over the rest of Liberty X to the terrorists, then scarper.
This is no time for heroics.
Great sporting insights
MIKE DEAN: “He’s gone for the ball which he obviously hasn’t.”
Kris Boyd: “As a player you have to wrong the rights.”
And Paul Merson: “It’s not like the striker’s gone four goals without a game.”
(Compiled by Graham Wray)
ATTEMPTING to justify the existence of poltergeists on Celebrity Help! My House Is Haunted, Jake Quickenden claims that wherever he goes: “The TV turns itself on and off.”
Click. Just off, Jake.
TV Gold
BBC1’s hidden gem Jailed: Inside Maghaberry Prison, where brilliant journalist Stephen Nolan lets no one off the hook.
Les Dennis channelling both Benny Hill and Captain Birdseye during Saturday’s tango.
Michael McIntyre and Bradley Walsh’s majestic handling of The Wheel and Blankety Blank, which are both more entertaining than Strictly.
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And SAS: Who Dares Wins DS Foxy adding the necessary pay-off when Towie’s Amber Turner attempted to describe herself in the most flattering terms imaginable on Sunday’s show: “I’m caring, passionate about what I do and a little bit, what’s the word?” “Arrogant.”
Lookalike of the week
THIS week’s winner, sent in by Pablo, from South London, is Edward Tattsyrup, from The League Of Gentlemen, and former LA resident Kevin O’Sullivan, who’s barking away like a madman all the time on TalkTV, but mainly weekdays 3pm to 5pm.