Hugh's Three Hungry Boys won't satisfy appetite for ice alternative

It's not that I'm a reality TV snob – far from it, in fact. I love Strictly, tolerate X Factor, and manage to find I'm A Celebrity sporadically amusing.

But there's something about Dancing On Ice which just gets the hackles rising, from the moment that tinny theme tune explodes into action.

And, just when you think the camped-up haplessness can't get any more cringeworthy, lithping Louie Spence, one of the most irritatingly unnecessary men to grace our TV screens, is parachuted in.

So, for me, Sunday nights have become something of a challenge. What to do between 6.30pm and 10pm when, apart from a light-hearted hour of Wild At Heart, it's all about bellowing Philip Schofield's glittery suits, skeletal Christine Bleakley's unfeasibly large white teeth, and a gang of Z-listers hell-bent on showing what they can't do.

Hugh Fearnley-Whitting-stall's usually an entertainingly quirky chap, so I checked out the concluding part of Hugh's Three Hungry Boys.

He challenged three game-for-a-laugh mates to travel from his cottage in Axminster, Devon, to Land's End in Cornwall over five weeks, without money, on what was billed as "the adventure of a lifetime"; just as Hugh himself did 15 years ago for his first TV show, A Cook On The Wild Side.

The trio's only transport was a 1980s electric milk float with a top speed of 17mph, and they had to hunt down their own food, and renewable electricity to keep their des-res on the road.

On this final leg, designer Trevor, builder Thom and scientist Tim made a bizarre detour to windswept Asparagus Island, tried in vain to snack on a squirrel, and made their last push via a cider-making factory and lobster breeding centre. All very amiable, with some beautiful Cornish sunsets, but somehow a little pointless.

Was this trying to be a cookery show, a hip and trendy travelogue, or a serious lesson in foraging which could help us all to live more cheaply off the land in these austere times?

Who knows? It came across as a gimmicky lesson in bartering and bantering from a silver-tongued trio of chiselled 30-year-olds seeking a bit of laddish fun.

When marine-loving Monty Halls shacked up in the Scottish wilderness, stripped of his creature comforts, his docu-tainment offering was refreshingly honest, humble and real.

The exploits of this trio appeared to owe far more to a creative team of producers and researchers than any genuine desire to put survival skills to the test.

The boys offered their labour in return for seafood and salt. Peter Andre did that in his critically panned show, Here To Help. But at least the perma-tanned pop star was doing his work for a good cause, rather than just to fill his own face.

There was never any doubt the boys were going to make it. If they'd driven in a straight line instead of faffing around, they'd have been there a fortnight ago.

So, the hungry boys certainly didn't satisfy my appetite for a Sunday ice antidote. Painfully contrived and lacking in humour or humility, it was a tedious hour spent in the company of three cock-sure big kids having far more fun than their audience.

Carl Jones