Is there any challenge that television producers haven't filmed celebrities doing? They won't be happy until they've followed a bunch of them snowboarding down an Alp while baking a cake, conducting an orchestra and researching their family history. And if it involves a little sob followed by a group hug, bonus!
But I can't be cynical about Sink or Swim (Channel 4) because it's in aid of the charity Strand Up to Cancer. The programme's USP is that 11 celebrities – using the term loosely – who are all weak or non-swimmers are being trained to do a sponsored relay swim across the Channel next month. Actually three of them are bona fide celebs – former Olympians Linford Christie, Tessa Sanderson and Greg Rutherford – while most of the rest you may have vaguely heard of.
The experts training them for the task in just three months are Olympic silver medallist Keri-anne Payne and adventurer Ross Edgley, the first person to swim around the British coastline.
The problem with SOS is that there's no real tension or conflict. God forbid that anyone should sink (ie drown), but if they did we would have heard about it and we certainly wouldn't be seeing this four-part series. We know everything will turn out all right, even if it doesn't go, er, swimmingly at the start. And in a show like this, any argument or dissent between participants would be really, really uncool; rather, they were quick to encourage each other and, yes, there was a lot of hugging, and indeed a few sobs as people tried to overcome their fear of water.
Last night, when the 11 were undergoing their initial assessments, we heard about the near-death experiences in water of two of the participants – singer Simon Webbe and TV presenter Diane-Louise Jordan – while another, Georgia Kousoulou from The Only Way Is Essex, had to withdraw because of her anxiety problems.
She's part of the shocking statistic that 25 per cent of adults in the UK – a nation surrounded by water – struggle to swim, so for those individuals SOS may serve a genuine purpose. And I had to stay my cynicism when I saw the immense effort that Alex Brooker (from The Last Leg) put in. In difficulty in his first open-water swim, the presenter, who was born with deformed limbs, was determined to complete the task because giving up would mean being defined by his disability.
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