You're never alone in the Antarctic, Sir Ranulph

SIR Ranulph Fiennes is a brave man, but a misguided one. Why channel so much energy into so pointless an enterprise as crossing Antarctica? I am immensely relieved that he has called off the grisly business of trekking across Antarctica before losing any more appendages to frostbite, and I hope he becomes more alive than dead in the next few weeks. But the thought that he justifies these he-man exercises because that is what we, the public, clamour for, makes my hackles rise. Please don't venture into the wilderness again, at any rate on my behalf.

Return to your Exmoor farmhouse, your loyally supportive wife and mother (all cast in traditional female roles, please note). Revive yourself in front of your Aga with the four Mars bars a day you apparently crave and rebuild the lost one-third of your body weight. Then live happily and quietly ever after. Since in the real world we all need money to survive, I will even suggest an alternative career. How about designing Ran's Computer Games around a survival scene? I am sure there would be a market.

Of course, there are those who see Sir Ranulph's exploits as quintessentially British: the quixotic upper-class romantic who, shorn of an empire and a genuine military career, pits himself against nature to relive the Captain Scott experience. The difference between Scott and Fiennes is that our contemporary hero could escape because ever-vigilant planes were standing by to whisk him and his companion, Dr Michael Stroud, to safety.

What the two men have surely proved is that even as they were small, shuffling dots of humanity in a white, ice-bound wasteland, they were not truly alone on the globe. If you give enough advance notice, and if you are important enough, you can be saved from the consequences of your actions. In my view, Sir Ranulph's adventures, though of the extreme kind, are actually akin to the monitored and accompanied treks undertaken by yuppies and the unattached to such places as the Himalayas.

There are, of course, public service spin-offs from these adventures. Scientists are monitoring how quickly the human body deteriorates when exposed to extreme cold - but I do not see why you need to walk across Antarctica to do this. There is also the expectation of raising pounds 2m for charity - this is the sponsored swim mentality gone mad.

But Sir Ranulph has told us that he goes in for these adventures primarily to earn a living, to prove that he is someone of consequence. The more extreme his suffering and experience, the greater the appetite for his books and the higher his profile on television. The greater, too, will be his fee on the international lecture circuit. One of the reasons his ordeal went on for so long was that he had to out-suffer the Norwegian adventure Erling Kagge, who was doing a similar trip but more quickly and more stylishly, on skis.

Well, I do not think I will be in the audience for Sir Ranulph's recountings. In my youth I remember being taken to hear Chay Blyth lecture about rowing across the Atlantic. In the end, it came down to eking out his rations at 800 calories a day while continuing to operate the oars with calloused hands. I remember thinking it was all very silly - I would now call it macho nonsense.

The point is that men tend to invent challenges for themselves. I do not want to scorn human endeavour, bravery or the yearning for extreme tests of physical or mental endurance. The late Bruce Chatwin had a fine line in taking solo treks through the remoteness of places such as Patagonia and the Middle East, surviving to recount what he had discovered in pieces of real literature. There are, at this moment, countless brave people risking their lives and health in Somalia and the former Yugoslavia attempting to bring relief in the name of humanity.

Nor do I discount the call of the wild. Those who find Sir Ranulph's self-promotion a bit rich should look at a recent issue of the New Yorker magazine. This carried an extraordinary and thoughtful article about a young college graduate who wanted to be free of society. He walked off into Alaska alone without proper preparation and without alerting any standby planes. He starved to death. He left an account of what he was trying to do, accompanied by photographs. At his hand when he was discovered was an open copy of Dr Zhivago. The thought of this man, and the question of what it was he was seeking that was worth dying for, disturb me. It is a much more problematic image than that conjured up by our two British media adventurers.