ALLY ROSS Why does Holly Willoughby dress as Where’s Wally on new BBC show?

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IF there’s one thing more exciting than discovering a character you really love, on television, it’s the buzz of discovering a character you really don’t like at all.

A character, for instance, like Owain Wyn Evans, the drumming Welsh weatherman who, like Jim Royle’s “s**t on a field,” is suddenly everywhere, craving our attention with a desperation not even Fred Sirieix or Dr Ranj can match.

Mostly, this week, Owain was doing it on Freeze The Fear With Wim Hof, an ITV show that has somehow ended up on BBC1, where it’s hosted, in northern Italy, by the unlikely combination of Holly Willoughby and Lee Mack, who had both come in fancy dress

She was in “Where’s Wally?” clobber.

He was dressed as Brian Harvey in East 17’s Stay Another Day video, to emphasise the cold.

An effect Lee rather ruined by taking his coat off halfway through FTF

The star of the show, though, was always meant to be Dutchman Wim, who’s one of those Uri Geller figures that crop up every decade or so, offering you an unlikely cure to life’s problems that will short-cut all the tough bits, like working hard and not being a tw*t.

Uri lets you take control of your mind by bending spoons.

Wim does it by “harnessing the power of the cold,” dressing like a member of the Grateful Dead and spouting the sort of psychobabble that carries about as much medical significance and intellectual gravity as the next Gary ­Barlow album.

If his plums weren’t already shrivelled enough, Wim also occasionally performs his own b*k-crushing version of the splits, just for added emphasis and showmanship.

What I like about him, though, is that he’s persuaded gullible fools the world over to make perfect exhibitions of themselves by jumping into ice-cold water then pronouncing themselves magically transformed.

Here, in the sublime setting of the Alps, the BBC had assembled eight more of them, who seemed to be the ghosts of Strictly past, present and future.

As well as Owain, we had: Dancer Dianne Buswell, Professor Green, Chelcee Grimes, Tamzin Outhwaite, Gabby Logan, Patrice Evra, in full Swiss Toni mode, and a freshly divorced and deeply repentant Alfie Boe, who arrived buffed-up and boasting his own ­anagram: “OBE.”

No fat celebrities, you’ll notice, due either to the limitations of the BBC’s insurance premiums or Wim’s method, which required them to jump through an ice hole into a freezing lake and then ­dutifully agree as someone, usually Holly, assured them: “Wim gave you the strength.”

This task they all managed, with a reasonable lack of fuss.

Except, of course, for Owain, who could not do it without tearfully sharing his inner turmoil, the cruel (standard) setbacks of childhood that forced him into the limelight and a theatrical pause before he launched himself to a burst of Emeli Sande: “Some people are scared of heights, some are scared of cold, I’m just . . .”

Scared of not being famous. Now there’s a good lad. JUMP

Eventually, Wim “gave him the strength” and he did — and though the temptation must have been to leave Owain down there, they fished him out and something almost as unwelcome then happened. Wim vanished.

Wim vanished. I’ve no idea where, but he was definitely Hofski — and Freeze The Fear literally fell off a cliff.

Back in the Eighties, when a show ran out of ideas, it would resort to gungeing people. Now, they send them abseiling.

The crucial difference being, you stood far more chance of getting killed on a Noel Edmonds show than abseiling because, if one of them had landed on their head, I promise you, news of Alfie Boe’s tragic death would’ve filtered out and the show would never have been aired.

They had to go through the full pretence, obviously.

But even with all the production trickery and faux drama in the world, there was still another 15 minutes of the show to fill once this “facing your fears” filler was over and nothing for the celebs to do except trudge back to their accommodation.

I say “accommodation.”

It’s actually luxury Alpine yurts that were filled with acoustic guitars, champagne and pretty soon afterwards, the sound of the last thing viewers probably need to hear during a cost- of-living/energy crisis: Comparatively rich celebrities ­having the time of their lives.

As bad optics go, it’s not quite up there with Boris doing a conga round No10, but the thing about celebrities having fun onscreen is that it always means the viewers are having none off-screen.

And I wouldn’t mind so much if, after running out of things to do within 30 minutes, there was only one episode of this BS.

But, turns out, Freeze The Fear is a SIX-part series and I am now duty bound to watch every single one of them.

Wim Hof. Give me bloody strength.

About the author

Olivia Wilson
By Olivia Wilson

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