This Side of the Pond

While my parents were visiting, we found ourselves addicted to a reality tv show by the name of “Alone”.

If you’ve never caught an episode, it’s an extreme survival competition for which willing victims are dumped into harsh environments with little more than a tarpaulin and an ax and told to keep themselves fed and warm for as long as they possibly can.

The winner of “Alone” walks away with a life-changing amount of money. Everyone else walks away with emaciated arms and PTSD from endless weeks of not being able to catch a fish and the constant threat of a bear visit.

Imagine our horror to discover that the Brits are now getting in on this action.

It’s just never going to work. It’s tough enough for the North American contestants, who grew up hunting and fishing and generally fending for themselves while in the wilderness.

When we started watching the original American version of the show, we were in awe of the knowledge and creativity of the contestants. We watched with wide eyes as they foraged for roots and berries we would never have known were edible and brought down grouse with flimsy-looking bows.

Of course, several seasons in, we became judgmental. You’d have thought we were survival experts ourselves from the tuts when someone didn’t know how to weave a fishing net or was expending too much energy chopping trees.

As though we’d last more than a night in the Arctic Circle.

You could always tell which contestant was about to go home because they’d start justifying it to themselves – they’d done everything they wanted to, for instance (except winning a lot of money) or were losing precious time with family when they knew full well that was going to happen when they signed up.

We didn’t approve of the competitors who just lounged around using as little energy as possible, like the guy who quite literally sat on a log until he got so bored he went home. We preferred the ones who put some serious effort into their own comfort.

Our favorite was a woman who built herself a comfortable hut complete with indoor hearth, wardrobe (with hangers!), easy chair and a lined path across to her sauna tent.

We figured out fast that survival in nature is a talent unique to places with lots of wild outdoor space. It is not the purview of a people who live on an island small enough that you are guaranteed to come across a gas station that sells sandwiches far before you need to consider munching on a leech.

It is not something that’s necessary in a land where the climate is temperate almost all year round and the largest predator is a badger. Not even the scary American badgers that look like they want to gut you – this is the “Wind in the Willows” type of badger that looks over its spectacles while dispensing wise advice.

Hunting is not encouraged from a young age, because there’s nothing to stalk in the woods. You can’t shoot the deer because they all belong to the Crown and you won’t get much in the way of meat from a weasel.

I know my homeland birthed Bear Grylls, but there’s a reason he’s so famous – he is an anomaly. The rest of us don’t know an edible mushroom from the sole of our shoe and we couldn’t build a shelter if you gave us ready-sawed logs and a blueprint.

After my parents arrived home, they discovered that such a thing now exists as “Alone UK”. We can only assume that the producers thought it would be hilarious to ask a Brit to undergo the same sort of endurance test as an American or a Canadian.

I have yet to be able to watch it as they haven’t started streaming it here yet, but my mother is sending me constant updates. I think it helps her with the second-hand embarrassment.

One chap went home on the first day after smacking himself in the leg with an axe. The first woman to land said she wouldn’t be camping too far from her arrival spot because she often gets lost in her local supermarket.

A young student almost had to leave because he managed to injure his nether regions while putting up his tent. Another guy confidently identified some edible roots and promptly vomited when he tried to eat them.

Yet another contestant said he was struggling with the “mental game” and wasn’t sure how much longer he could hold out – on the second day. Another said he felt weak and was concerned for his health because he hadn’t eaten. This was also on the second day.

In the latest episode, one twit felt sure he could creep up on a grouse and dispatch it with his walking stick. Apologies for the spoiler, but it turns out he could not.

Instead, he stepped on one end of a piece of wood and the other end smacked him in the face, proving once and for all that slapstick comedy does not require a script.

Another participant lost his temper after trying to use his bow to bring down a duck that was so far away it might as well have been back in the UK. One woman tried to build a teepee, but she couldn’t remember what it was supposed to look like so it immediately fell back down again.

All of this accompanied by the kind of bad language that would never get past American censors. I knew my people enjoyed a good curse word, but the guy who hit himself in the leg with an axe was still swearing at ever-decreasing volume as he disappeared into the distance on the helicopter.

All of this in the first few episodes – we’re still waiting to find out how long any of them managed to suffer in their Canadian purgatory. My bet is that they barely make it past a fortnight.

The optimistic fools who felt this was a challenge they could overcome were apparently given a nine-day course to help them understand the very basics of survival living, but I’d argue that was not even a tenth of the necessary training. As it turns out, we are simply not a practical people.

Which really does make me wonder how we ever managed to build an empire.