Ben Fogle, and other presenters whose careers are just one long televised jolly

IF there’s one area where all TV channels agree, it’s that Britain wants to see a familiar face with an enviable lifestyle get a free holiday. These bellends always fly business class: 

Ben Fogle

The strawberry blonde Bear Grylls has spent his life visiting exotic locations on the basis that women who keep biscuits in tins would enjoy seeing him wear a jumper there. Irritatingly, this belief has proven completely correct. So secure is he as number one in his absurd profession, he does not even drive a signature car.

James May

May’s career highlight cast him as a tepid shadow of a man between an imp and a vainglorious dick. Still, it was the ideal low-lift vehicle for new shows where he gets pissed in exotic locations, gets toured around Japan, plays with toys and flies fighter jets. All for being a middle-aged pervert for horsepower.

Jane McDonald

Trading the arse-end of a professional singing career for an easy life going on cruises and holidays while playing a bawdy Northern caricature who loves Tories? Who wouldn’t? Because what you might not realise is that McDonald, for many, is an aspirational figure.

Michael Palin 

Palin always gets a pass for being a Python, even though he’s spent a quarter of a century swanning around the globe as one-sixth of a cultural icon. As with his comedy, he spawned a host of followers keen to get paid for nine weeks pissing about among other cultures who do not care about them.

Helen Skelton

When the after-school kids’ club of Blue Peter wasn’t enough dossing around, Helen traded her annoying am-dram energy to snooze her way through occasional animal sightings on Countryfile. Now cuddles newborn lambs because she’s the only presenter available who’s actually from bloody Cumbria.

Jasmine Harman

Technically an estate agent, but unlike the rest of her profession found the box on the application form that said ‘Prefers only to work in exotic locations during summer months’ and firmly ticked it. Has spent 20 years showing buyers around sun-kissed Mediterranean locations with no real financial stake in the outcome, but lots of sun dresses.

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Solo diners bring everyone down, admit restaurants

RESTAURANTS have confirmed they refuse booking for lone diners not because they take up a table for two with a meal for one but because they ruin the mood. 

Single bookings are routinely turned down by restauranteurs as money-losers because their visible isolation puts off more cheerful and socially adept clients.

Luigi di Cartello, who owns a Southampton bistro, said: “It’s unbearable watching their hangdog faces loom over the top of their menu, crossword puzzles and the phones they’re undoubtedly watching porn on.

“It’s awkward for other couples, who assume they’ve been stood up and I have to explain no, this person came here without even the hope of meaningful interaction with a human.

“We can’t have them sat by the window, putting off smiling diners with functioning personal relationships off, but sitting them opposite a mirror to create the illusion of another person just has them gazing unavoidably at the reason why they’re alone.

“Even when we park them by the kitchens they put the chefs off by weeping into their bowls of tagliatelle or making desperate conversation with the waiters because they’ve not spoken to another person for 72 hours.

“Really, the only good thing about them is that they order more wine than a party of six.”