Rachel Riley being eaten by a shark won't help ocean conservation
Shark! Celebrity Infested Waters (ITV1) is a reasonably entertaining watch, mostly because Amandaland actress Lucy Punch is in it, but the funniest thing about it is the way it pretends to be a programme about shark conservation. My concern for the world's shark populations is not going to be affected by whether or not they eat Rachel Riley from Countdown. Let's get real. The celebrities agreed to this because their agent told them they could have a lovely holiday in the Bahamas.
Well, six of these celebrities have a great time: Punch, Riley, Lenny Henry, Ross Noble, Ade Adepitan and Dougie Poynter. The seventh is Helen George. The Call the Midwife actress is the one with a phobia of the sea, and either she wasn't listening when her agent explained the concept of this show or her agent sold her a doozy, because George seems to have fundamentally misunderstood the assignment.
'I genuinely thought we'd only meet sharks once in this experience,' she says, while the others look at her with pity. She has just been told, on day one, that she will be cage-diving with bull sharks. In a nice touch, the team of experts guiding them through this experience includes an Australian who only has one arm because the other one was bitten off by a bull shark in Sydney Harbour. He now dedicates his time to promoting shark conservation 'because the real danger is not an ocean with sharks, it's an ocean without them'. He doesn't expand on this, and nor does another expert who says that bull sharks are vital because they 'take care of sick animals' in the ocean, and you might expect a bit more from a programme about shark conservation.
Instead, there are lots of jokes, mostly supplied by Punch and Henry. 'What am I most scared of? Well, I'm scared of a shark attack, obviously,' says Punch. 'They are savage tubes of teeth.' She is paired with Henry during the cage dive, and they're in good spirits throughout. Henry says: 'This is the realest thing I've ever seen, and I've done panto in Lewisham.'
It does look frightening, even with metal bars between the humans and the sharks. George is paired with one of the experts, who thinks that the best way to calm her nerves is to say: 'Helen, you are surrounded 360 degrees by sharks! This one is MASSIVE!' The poor woman has a panic attack, and you don't blame her. It's uncomfortable to watch, but then again, she could have stayed at home.
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