TVReview: In 2003 a heatwave across Europe killed more than 35,000 people, and in Paris alone 15,000 people, mostly the elderly and vulnerable, died in their homes of dehydration. In all probability, by 2080 the stultifying heat of 2003 will be looked back on as a cool summer.
David Attenborough kicked off the BBC's Climate Chaos season with Are We Changing Planet Earth? a gloomy, authoritative, meticulously well-made and deeply sobering investigation into whether it is human activity that is causing our world to turn rapidly into an oven.
From mighty Arctic polar bears struggling to feed their young as ice-fields melt too early and reduce their feeding season, to glaciers collapsing into warming seas, causing hurricanes to whip the sky like massive dervishes, unleashing storm surges such as Katrina to ravage the Gulf coastline, Attenborough has once again made unmissable television. Sadly, though, this short season of programmes does not celebrate life on earth so much as cling to its bootlaces as it accelerates into the unknown.
Statistic after statistic told the same story of fossil fuels creating greenhouse-gas emissions which swaddle the planet, locking in heat and bringing global warming, melting ice, raised sea levels, flooding and drought. Attenborough examined the deterioration of eco-structures such as Australia's Great Barrier Reef (now bleached and skeletal due to warmer seas and the absence of certain algae), the Amazon rainforest (the "lungs of the world", already battered by deforestation and now wilting because of drought), and the glaciers of Patagonia (sprouting rock flowers where ice once dominated).
Although Attenborough acknowledged that since time began our world has been subject to natural climate fluctuations, he concluded definitively that in the last 40 years the massively accelerated alterations are largely man-made.
The series continues with an assessment of how climate chaos might further manifest itself (including depictions of London as a future Atlantis) and a look at ways we can all contribute to slowing that process down. As Attenborough confessed, in the 50 years that he has been traversing the planet and recording its wonders, he too has been adding to its problems. It is time, he argues, for us all to leave a lighter footprint if our ingenious species is to rise to the greatest challenge in its history. Recommended, nay, required viewing.
A glance through this week's TV schedules confirmed my worst fears. The vague sense of foreboding that's been lurking since the evenings lengthened has metamorphosed into full-blown despair - we are now just a sliver of metatarsal away from the World Cup. In fact, Planet Football is hurtling towards us as fast as a Ronaldinho free-kick, and bar wrapping your telly up in your yoga mat and posting it to Santa Claus, there's really no avoiding it.
To add insult to certain injury, in a week when Soccer Aid liberally sprinkled our screens with celebrity charity games, Gordon Ramsay's lightly browned ligaments and Robbie Williams's inflated desire to be a soccer stud, we were also treated to a whimsically genteel portrait of the fastest-changing hairdo in footie history. David Beckham: A Footballer's Story was a toothless, soporific prance through the enchanted garden of a football icon who has a media profile even bigger than his bank account.
Given that Becks and his wife, Victoria (aka Posh Spice), have, we were told (and told again), to endure constant media attention, and given that they have at times almost singlehandedly propped up the tabloid news industry with murky tales of eating disorders, libidinous personal assistants and shoe mania, one might have expected "Goldenballs" to tell film-maker Tim Lovejoy (there's an optimistic moniker) where to secrete his idea of showing the great viewing public "the real Becks". But no - instead, Lovejoy got permission to make an extended PR promo: sunny Becks; England captain Becks; Real Madrid merchandise hero Becks; faithful husband to skeletal ex-Spice Girl Becks; and Dad of auspiciously named sons (hands up who doesn't know where Brooklyn was conceived) Becks.
However, over the course of a very long hour, during which we learned that Beckham lines up his Pepsi cans neatly in the fridge, does the supermarket shopping, buys expensive cars with monogrammed hubcaps, wears his trainers only once but his underwear maybe twice, and enjoys the pain of being tattooed (whoops), one began to suspect, alarmingly, that this was it; this was as in-depth and personal as Dave got.
He's a nice bloke with a nice smile and, as commentators say, when his boot hits the ball the result can be sublime. Beckham, speaking from the depths of a crisp pink shirt and a snowy white couch, articulated (kind of) his desire to see his football academies flourish, spoke of his pain (I think) at Alex Ferguson's rejection and managed to string a few sentences together on his newfound contentment in Madrid - and he seemed really... nice. Bet you if he'd had "I Love Fergie" tattooed on the back of his neck he'd still be kicking up the damp turf at his spiritual home, Old Trafford, despite his cranky wife and penchant for ponchos and sarongs.
EVEN THE DOGS in the street know that Real Madrid has lost its sparkle (did that sound even vaguely knowledgeable?). This much I gleaned from Leagues Apart With Ardal O'Hanlon, a travelogue which sees the benign O'Hanlon (who fell in love with football when he was four) travel around Europe visiting great soccer stadiums, sampling the local cuisine and juggling potted European history with his passion for the game (nice work if you can get it).
O'Hanlon is a good host. Having plummeted from the dizzying heights of Father Ted to the purgatory of sitcom mediocrity, he seems relieved to be back in control of his material. "I'm from Monaghan, I don't get excited that easily," he claimed as, perusing the Spanish sports pages in the shadow of Barcelona's Sagrada Familia, he excitedly anticipated the emotionally charged clash between Barca (of which he is a laminated card-carrying member), the central focus of Catalan identity and home to Ronaldinho (the player Real reportedly said was too ugly too sell shirts), and Real Madrid, with it's coachload of heavily coiffured, hairy-bottomed has-been galacticos.
Maybe it's just weather fatigue, but the beautiful streets around the Ramblas, the plates of grilled artichokes and the smoky haze of amber-coloured bars somehow made the football element of O'Hanlon's trip tolerable. I'm sure that given some heat and a spicy bottle of Rioja, even I'd be roaring for the "bunch of lads in unflattering yellow playing donkey" (as O'Hanlon described Barca's pre-match kickaround).
Tall, sexy, beautiful and blousey were how some of the participants in this year's Chelsea Flower Show were described and the judges weren't talking about Charlie Dimmock. Gardeners are equally as passionate as footballers, they just do different things with a green rectangle.
Flower shows make great television, turning the screen into a botanical chocolate-box selection: blueberry ruffle Lavandula, sunny cappuccino chrysanthemum, and the red pom-poms of the New Zealand Pohutukawa tree (which crashes into flower when you tickle its roots, and why wouldn't it?).
The Chelsea show, as one contributor said, is the gardening Oscars, and if that's the case, best supporting topiary should go to the giant mud maiden, made of variegated foliage and shards of mirror, reclining blissfully green and naked in the watery sun while ladies in rubber ankle-boots and Burberry headscarves stared.
Talking of rubber boots and headscarves, Margaret Thatcher, who lived round the corner from the show, used to be a keen gardener (later, she just pruned services), according to her daughter, the effervescent Carol. Prior to her election, it is said that Mrs T grew dahlias the size of dinner plates - not a woman given to half measures.
ENOUGH LOVELINESS ALREADY. I have bad news: Big Brother, the human zoo, is back in business; bleaker, nastier and, according to its gleeful producers, "more twisted than ever".
"The brotherhood", which includes a singer with Tourette's syndrome and a woman sporting the UK's largest breast implants, swarmed around their fibreglass world in fascistic little berets waiting for the evictions to begin. One contestant left of his own accord: Shahbaz Choudhary, an incendiary and possibly suicidal gay Muslim.
Having said "I came here to die on this programme, I'm going to prove it", Shahbaz thankfully left the house in nothing more than a storm of teacups. Another, Dawn Blake, was kicked out, suspected of receiving coded messages from the outside world. BB7 is a bloated, lascivious beast eating the entrails of the damaged and the vulnerable. This is one world that has become so shockingly overheated that you can only hope it will burn itself out.
