How to be … a travelogue presenter

One approach is to patronise the locals, another is to immerse yourself in a culture. Failing that you could just hate robots They’ll let just about anyone present a travelogue these days. Caroline Quentin’s got one. Kate Humble’s got one. Justin Lee Collins has got one. So how could you get one too? Here are five things you need to remember … Become famous for something completely unrelated to travel You don’t need to be an experienced travel presenter to present a travelogue. Or a presenter. You don’t even need to particularly enjoy travelling, for that matter. Here, more or less, is how the modern travelogue commissioning process works: one bag contains the names of people off the telly (Griff Rhys Jones, Piers Morgan, Robbie Coltrane, Joanna Lumley, Caroline Quentin, Martin Clunes), and another contains some locations (Dubai, India, the B roads of the United Kingdom, Guernsey, all of Africa as seen from a hot air balloon). Then they get drawn together, FA Cup-style. Have a clear reason for making the travelogue Covering the battle of Anzio for the British army’s Film and Photo Unit instilled in Alan Whicker a deep love of capturing the world on camera. It was this love that prompted him to become an international reporter for BBC’s Tonight , which in turn spurred him on to make a beloved travel-based documentary series of his own. Meanwhile, in the first episode of Channel 5′s recent travelogue Turning Japanese , Justin Lee Collins unveiled a different, but no less worthwhile, motivation: “I’m not particularly well-travelled, I’ve never really been outside of my comfort zone … I don’t like robots”. Which is basically the same thing if you think about it. Please don’t think about it. Where possible, link travel with food If you want to see a country, look at its food. This is why so many travelogues shine a light on the cuisines of far-flung lands. And, if you’re after a food-based travelogue, it’s important to find your niche. There are presenters who’ll eat anything, such as Anthony Bourdain . There are presenters who’ll drink anything, such as James May and Oz Clarke. There are presenters who’ll eat everything, such as Adam Richman from the brilliant Man v Food. However, there has never been a presenter who goes abroad, only ever orders chips regardless of location and still somehow manages to contract an explosive form of food poisoning that rears up at spectacularly inopportune moments. Commissioning editors, call me. Develop advanced condescension skills A great deal of your travelogue will be taken up by your interaction with real locals, and your experiences with a culture that you might not be familiar with. And, while it’s important not to directly judge them, you are allowed to be a bit condescending. Just like Caroline Quentin during her travelogue A Passage Through India, really – especially the moment when she meets a housewife who has to cook for 10 people every day much to Quentin’s obvious dismay. And the moment when a local tells her that the Ganges river has antiseptic properties. And, oh, pretty much everything else she does. Go native If you want to fully immerse yourself in a different culture, like Bruce Parry , then you have to follow a different set of conventions. First you must throw yourself into any gruesome initiation ceremony that your host tribe requests of you, even if it does look like it’s been cooked up to make you look like a fool. And second, always end your travelogue with a shot of a tribeswoman saying how handsome you are. It doesn’t matter if she doesn’t actually say you’re handsome because she’s saying it in a language that hardly anyone speaks, so you can just subtitle whatever you like. Not that Bruce Parry does that, you understand. But I would. Travel TV Television Stuart Heritage guardian.co.uk

Posted by on March 16, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.