Pale, male, stale and clueless: why we should send travel TV presenters into exile

I wouldn’t expect Peter Kay to talk us through the Tudors or Ant and Dec to front Frozen Planet. So why must we watch travel presenters whose very ignorance of the countries they visit is their selling point, asks author and train travel expert Monisha Rajesh

Jack Whitehall (right) and father Michael have their own travel show, ‘Travels with my Father’ (Getty Images for BFI)

In spring this year, comedian Michael Spicer tweeted a clip that went viral. Seemingly a trailer for a new travel documentary, it showed Spicer ambling around the British Isles making inane observations about trees, marvelling at unremarkable art, and churning out cliches to camera before concluding: “I am a famous, white, middle-aged man and I can make whatever tedious programmes I want.” Satire, but given the risible nature of travel programmes today, it could easily have been real. With almost five million views, the clip threw up a serious question: why are commissioning editors insulting us with these shows?

Over the last couple of years, I’ve watched with ever-increasing blood pressure as travel and comedy have merged into one lazy hybrid in which a self-regarding celebrity drags a reluctant friend or parent to a foreign land with funny-looking people and funnier food, and embarks upon a puerile mission to embrace the natives and discover something about themselves – usually very little – while eating grilled scorpions and gatecrashing a stranger’s wedding before flying home.