A question of balance

Time to catch up with the men in pink pants as their journey comes to an end in the dense jungle of Papua New Guinea. How appropriate the title Last Man Standing proves as the six young athletes compete in their final sport against remote tribes. Standing was what they can't do in a narrow dugout canoe. It requires balance, technique and intense concentration. An incentive not to fall in the water is that it's infested with crocodiles.

Their tribal teacher Paul - the tribesmen have taken English names - is quick to judge their early efforts. "They look like a bunch of five or six-year-olds," he says.

At least they don't have to wear the pink knickers required in Mongolian wrestling the other week. They do have to eat sago grubs, after harvesting them from rotten logs. These overgrown maggots are their only nourishment during the two-day canoe race.

"Listen to that crunch," says Brad as Oxford graduate Richard pops one into his mouth and chews the still-wriggling creature.

Coast's umbrella man Nicholas Crane isn't required to eat anything horrible as he embarks on Great British Journeys, following the trail of eight men who discovered our country.

He just needs to keep his balance climbing "troublesome mountains" (presumably rejected by Griff Rhys Jones for his BBC1 Mountain series).

Climbing a scree slope, compromising enormous angular blocks precariously balanced, was the problem. It's incredibly easy, Crane points out, to break an ankle or a leg. Halfway up he declares, "This is absolutely mad", followed by the equally exasperated, "This is rubbish - one step up and two back. It's a purgatory of rubble".

Happily, he emerges unscathed to continue dogging the footsteps of Thomas Pennant, a Welshman whose destination in the late 1700s was "desolation itself", or the islands and highlands of Scotland as the tourist office calls it.

TV needs another series about the British countryside like the BAA needs protesters camping on its Heathrow doorstep, but Crane is such an energetic and enthusiastic guide that I'm happy to tag along with him in future weeks.

In one marvellous moment, on the isle of Iona, he looks for holes in the hills where men-on-the-run hid from pursuers.

These hidey-holes are big enough to contain a man in a sitting position.

Spying one, Crane jumps in feet first, expressing the hope that this isn't a bottomless hole. Thankfully for him, it's not - "it's full of sludge," he says dropping out of sight.

While Crane is exploring Britain, various celebrities discover India and Pakistan as part of the BBC's season marking the 60th anniversary of the British withdrawal.

All very nice, but The Day India Burned: Partition is a timely reminder of what happened in 1947 as the handover of power after 200 years of British rule became a tragedy of epic proportions.

Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs had been living largely in communal harmony until a British barrister, who'd never been further than Paris, drew a line on a map to divide the country into India and Pakistan.

In the ensuing madness, people were forced out of villages they had lived in for generations with 15 million people scrambling to be on the right side of the new border. One million people died in the process.

The programme assembles a varied collection of eye-witnesses. The real horror is brought home as a Sikh, only a boy at the time, recalls seeing his father behead his daughter, followed by others doing the same, for fear the women of the village would be taken by Muslims.

The British hardly helped matters by keeping the new boundary secret until after independence and then quitting the country nearly a year earlier than planned. That way, they couldn't be held accountable for the chaos and violence that would inevitably ensue.

This is a grim story with the British attitude perhaps summed up in the detail given of the Viceroy's household which had a 5,000-strong staff. These included 25 indoor gardeners, who arranged flowers in vases, and a man who did nothing but pluck chickens. He, at least, served a useful purpose, unlike the man whose job was to stamp butter pats with a seal bearing the British crown.