The Wild Gourmets - Dumb With Admiration

Channel 4 Tuesdays 8.30pm

I am dumbstruck with admiration by this programme. It has two Very Posh Types - one of each sex - running about the countryside causing annnoyance to local landowners by chirruping on about how you can Feast Off The Land FOR FREE!

Turns out stuff you need for this venture - and can presumably get for free - includes a gurt big shotgun, shooting licence, fishing rods, an extensive portable kitchen garden of herbs and olive oil, and a large Land Rover. Up till last Tuesday night I thought that getting these things for free was probably illegal, so I struggle to articulate the full extent of my frothy-mouthing jazz-hand-waving excitement at this good news.

I missed the first episode (which presumably covered the acquisition of these goodies in some step by step detail) to discover the mad naked people heartily throwing buckets of water over themselves while justifying this open [air] masochism with plucky references to "bush showers". It's all so splendid, and so utterly irrelevant to feasting off the land for free - though sadly Tommy (who is a Lady) is not quite as sporting as Guy, and often keeps her very Guernsey jerseyed outfits on.

Another splendid feature of this prog is the way that whenever they Utterly Fail to catch their supper, they say "It's not a supermarket, if you can take feast or famine then you'll live well off the land." What is this, Channel Four Fluffy Outdoor Eating Half Hour, or Rudyard Kipling? What a doodlenoodle headed thing to say. You said you were going to feast off the land, and now You've Failed. Eat grass, you posh mollynoddle, go on, EAT THE GRASS. But sadly they refuse the grass, and still more sadly refuse to poach salt-turf-eating sheep, and instead choose to trade turnip-cutting for a leg of lamb. I found this a bit poor spirited, but I suppose it is better than if they had shot the farmer from the other side of the Bristol Channel, cited that rather evil law from Very Long Ago that says English shooting of Welsh people is legal, and then appropriated his whole flock and family, which is how I understand is how the upper classes have traditionally lived for free off the land.