The Further Adventures of an Idiot Abroad (2 page)

How much have you learned from watching TV? I learned that vinegar is a good stain remover. It’s something I picked up from watching Kim and Aggie off
How Clean Is
Your House?

A while ago, three British backpackers who got lost in a Malaysian jungle said they survived thanks to tips they picked up from watching the TV survival expert Ray Mears. They said they’d
now watch every episode of Ray Mears in case the situation ever cropped up again! You’d think what they’d been through would have put them off the programme, as it would bring back bad
memories of their near-death experience. It would be like Anne Frank watching
Cash in the Attic
.

The advice that saved the backpackers from being lost was that you should follow a watercourse downstream and that would lead you to the coastline. I’m just glad it was Ray Mears the
backpackers had watched. If it had been Bruce Parry they’d still be lost but would now probably be off their tits after licking the back of a toxic toad. But this left me wondering if anyone
had ever opted for the survival tactics offered up by Bear Grylls. Bear is a bit more extreme than Ray. If you said to Bear, ‘I’m so hungry I could eat a scabby horse,’ he would
probably say, ‘Too late. I’ve eaten it all.’ In one show he was covered in blood and guts after stripping a camel. He then went on to explain that the carcass makes an excellent
makeshift sleeping bag! I don’t want to come across all Goldilocks here, but how much sleep are you going to get inside a camel? It must be the worst animal to use as a bed. It’s got a
hump on it, for a start. I have the feeling that if Bear missed the last bus home when in England he’d probably break into London Zoo and strangle a giraffe for a sleeping bag, then kill a
couple of Koala bears while he’s at it to make a pair of slippers, rather than just get a cab. Anyway, if you ever find yourself in this situation, having killed a camel to sleep in, and your
clothes are covered in bloodstains, try vinegar.

I’ve never been in a position where I’ve had to use proper survival techniques. My brother and his mates took over the house when me mam and dad were on holiday once. I came home
from working nights to find some bloke and a woman in me bed, another pair of strangers in me mam and dad’s bed, and a couple on the sofa, so ended up sleeping in the car. That’s about
as tough as it’s got for me, so this is why I picked a night on a desert island from the Bucket List. I thought it would test me a little, plus, of all the things on the Bucket List,
I’d say this is the one most people would like to do. I was imagining the TV advert for the Bounty bar. For anyone who hasn’t seen the advert, it involved a woman on a really nice
paradise-type beach. Nothing like the beaches we all spend our holidays on. There was no washed-up seaweed, plastic bottles or dead jellyfish, no donkeys leaving shit everywhere, or seagulls making
a racket. It was just the perfect beach with light blue sea. A coconut drops from a palm tree and cracks open to leave a Bounty bar, which is a bar of coconut-filled chocolate. Now, by rights, I
doubt the woman would have been up for eating chocolate on such a hot day. I think she’d have been more in the mood for a Magnum lolly, but putting that aside I reckon most people who have
seen the advert would be imagining this same image as me if they were to pick this for their Bucket List.

Luke the director said I could take a few bits and pieces with me that might come in handy for my night on the island. I ended up packing a lighter, a roll of gaffa tape, a Stanley knife, a
crossword/wordsearch book, some string, biscuits, toilet paper and a small shovel.

I would be staying on an island in Vanuatu, a place in the South Pacific. I’d never heard of the place. When I told people where I was going they hadn’t heard of it either. Suzanne
bought me a globe when I started travelling so I could put little stickers on all the places I had been to, but this globe didn’t even include Vanuatu.

I was told that it wasn’t possible to get a direct flight to Vanuatu due to a massive ash cloud from a volcano in Chile that was causing problems, so we ended up flying to Sydney and then
on to New Zealand where we stayed the night. I thought we’d be getting on another flight first thing, but that was not to be the case. I woke up to a voicemail from Stephen.

This really annoyed me. He was the furthest away he’d ever been from me and yet he had still managed to annoy me more than ever. I’d made it clear to them at the very beginning that
this was exactly the thing I was not up for doing. I remember being sat in their office when they told me about the Bucket List idea and Stephen mentioned bungee jumping, and I said, ‘If
that’s the sort of things you’ll be surprising me with, you’re wasting your time ’cos I’m not interested.’ If it’s over in seconds, what’s the point?
I don’t like party poppers ’cos the amount of enjoyment versus the time it takes to clean them up is not worth it. Same with confetti.

Luke the director tried to reinforce what Stephen’s message had already said about it being safe and that the ‘dudes’ who would be taking me do it all the time and would help
me beat my fears, which pissed me off even more as it’s not a fear that needs to be beaten. I’m happy that my brain doesn’t think it’s a good idea to jump off ledges that
are high up. To me that means it’s doing its job, that’s the reaction it should have. I know my brain isn’t very interested in maths or politics, which annoys me at times, but
that doesn’t put the rest of my body in any danger, so as far as I’m concerned it’s not a ‘fear’ that needs fighting. I’ve heard of koumpounophobia, which means
your brain is scared of buttons. There was a woman on the news who had it so bad she couldn’t even sit and watch the kids’ TV programme
Button Moon.
It was like a horror movie
to her, and she couldn’t turn the TV off, or over, because that would involve more buttons. Now, that’s a fear that needs beating.