Natural World (BBC2); Extreme Celebrity Detox (C4)

AS a public service, I'll pass on the following: "Once you can read the snow, you can find your way home even in a blizzard" and "a boy becomes a man when he becomes a hunter".

The Natural World documentary was full of sayings like that when, to be honest, words weren't always necessary as A Boy Among Polar Bears was full of breathtaking images and spectacular landscapes.

The youngster of the title was 11-year-old Apak Taktu, a North American Inuit lad making his first trip out into the frozen Arctic Sea. The Inuit - the people we persist in calling Eskimos - now live in towns but they keep traditions alive. Apak is taken by his father, Andrew, to learn such survival skills as igloo-building, handling a dog sled, hunting seals and avoiding polar bears.

There was a secondary story about a sculptor but this seemed there merely to fill out the 50-minute slot.

Much of Apak's adventure was fascinating as he put on his caribou fur coat and ventured out into a frozen landscape where temperatures reach minus 40. He learned by watching and helping his father.

We saw father and son build a igloo. "A boy's first igloo is never easy," said the narrator, adding that you need "the right kind of snow". But two experienced Inuits can build an igloo in 30 minutes, which can be the difference between life and death in a storm.

Building a shelter isn't part of the plan in Extreme Celebrity Detox. You wouldn't wish these far-out treatments in far-flung places on your worst enemy, although Z-list celebrities getting their comeuppance is a different matter.

Lisa I'Anson, James Brown, Rowland Rivron and Magenta DeVine have been lured by guru Piers Brittain to a house without electricity or running water on a plateau in the Himalayas. First up is flushing out a lifetime's mucus from their celebrity sinuses. This involves pouring water in one nostril and having it come out the other. A "power snort" clears any residual grim out of the nose.

Drinking your own urine wasn't too everyone's taste, and no-one mastered putting a nine inch rubber tube up the nose, down the back of the throat and out through the mouth. Compared to that, projectile vomiting was easy to swallow. Or not swallow after drinking three litres of warm water and sticking your fingers down your throat.

"Don't try this at home," the programme warned. I can hear the conversation now: "What shall we do tonight - watch Coronation Street or have a session of projectile vomiting?". Some of us, of course, could name some shows that make us want to throw up anyway.

Published: ??/??/2004