GO NICHE

Oi! Who's Trevor Sargent calling useless? The "most useless generation to have ever strode the earth", to be precise.

Oi! Who's Trevor Sargent calling useless? The "most useless generation to have ever strode the earth", to be precise.

Okay, so maybe we can't all claim to live in a Syngean idyll where we thatch houses while stitching pampooties and mending fishing nets, but if the bomb dropped, and Tesco closed down, we'd survive. Wouldn't we? Well, maybe not - but we know a man who would.

Other than that guy who eats roadkill, no one is better equipped to forage for food than Ray Mears, the BBC's survival expert. Through his company Woodlore, he'll teach you how to do it, too.

Its Fundamental Bushcraft programme teaches total self-reliance in the outdoors, including how to light fires, build shelters and purify water. (If the credit crunch goes on we may all end up doing it anyway.) You'll also learn the basics of "backcountry hygiene", which you can be pretty sure won't involve toilet roll.

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The week-long course, which includes prepared meals alongside whatever you've caught yourself, costs £600 (€775) per person. Just don't ask for an autograph. Mears's website makes it clear he's much too busy surviving to sign them.

You can buy signed copies of his books, however. Indeed, a lot of the website seems to be taken up with ways to buy things from Mears. Maybe his ideas of survival and ours aren't so different after all.

www.raymears.com, 00-44-1580-819668.