There was one obvious response to BBC1’s icy new challenge show Freeze The Fear With Wim Hof.
“Who the hell thought the UK would want to watch people freezing their bits off in the wild right now?”
I duly assumed some goon at the Beeb had seen the Ice Bucket Challenge and thought “Let’s do six hours of that.”
I did have another question though: Why so many slow motion replays?
Was it so chilly in the Italian mountains that the cameras went into go-slow mode?
Or was there so little exciting content the editors had to find a way of padding the hour out?
If you watched it, you’re perhaps leaning towards the latter explanation.
It didn’t help that there was so little jeopardy in the first challenge set by “global phenomenon” Hof, who, regrettably, had not been nicknamed Bear Chylls for British audiences.
The eight celebrity contestants were asked to jump into an icehole on a frozen lake. However, as this was filmed ages ago and they’re all still on Twitter the chance of drama was as sub zero as the temperature.
There was a certain schoolboy delight in hearing “icehole” yelled in Hof’s Dutch accent, but that wasn’t the only thing that made me smile.
Even before the first celebrity took the plunge, the thought of Dawn French jumping in that puddle in The Vicar Of Dibley was planted firmly in my mind.
That, along with Wim appearing to channel Jean-Claude Van Damme’s Coors Light adverts and host Holly Willoughby kind of undermining the whole point by regularly telling the contestants to “go and get yourself warm”, meant that I struggled to take this programme seriously.
Obviously, if Hof’s “face your fears” spiel speaks to you, you may be inclined to stick it out.
Sadly, the more icy challenges I see the more I feel like raising my hand Cowell-style and asking Hof if he’s got a second song.
Maybe it’s time to ditch the Wim Hof Method and go for the Switch Hof Method instead.
