When Barack met Bear Grylls
North Wales, about three weeks ago: a child is stranded on some rocks off the coast, as the tide rolls in and threatens to cover them. But who is this hoving into view? Why, it is the RNLI, along with television’s Bear Grylls, who has masterminded the entire dumb-show. Not for a television programme, you understand. Just for fun. The big reveal for the lifeboat crew is that they have no idea there is going to be a real-life kid out there – much less that the child in question is Bear’s own son. Let’s up the stakes, lifeguards! Let’s do this! Let’s show these seas who’s boss! Also, let’s tweet it.
The moment is exquisitely heroic. Or, as the tetchily underbriefed lifeboat station manager put it when he returned from holiday to learn of the stunt: “The crew tell me they didn’t know Bear’s son was going to be on the rocks … As I understand, it was supposed to be a low-key exercise. I believe no photos were supposed to be taken. Thankfully, no one was hurt, but in his efforts to give the RNLI some publicity, this is the wrong kind.”
Oh, do be quiet, you boring little man. I much prefer the earlier verdict of an RNLI spokesman, who had categorised the farrago as a “joint training exercise” – that “joint” amusingly suggesting some kind of parity between the RNLI and the Grylls family. In truth, Lost in Showbiz thinks it would be more helpful if the RNLI saw itself as the Commissioner Gordon to Bear’s Batman. They both want the same thing, but the former is hopelessly outclassed by the latter, and must move to a position of grateful dependence, despite nursing various doubts about the vigilante’s methods.
As for the rest of us, wherever we were as a culture before Bear Grylls rescued us, it wasn’t a very happy place. In a sense we are all Bear’s children, marooned obediently on that rocky outcrop, waiting for him to come and save us with or without the buy-in of various junior emergency services.
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