Baz takes to the Arctic like Bambi took to the ice

In the netherworld of off-peak television, there is a phenomenon called Baz, a man who will do absolutely anything to get on the box.

Baz Ashmawy first came to a degree of prominence in the appropriately titled How Low Can You Go? – a sort of travel show for mad yokes where, week in week out, our hero took the programme title literally.

Now he’s the star of Baz's Extreme World, where this intrepid international traveller heads off on some adventure – from working as a fireman in New York to life on a fishing trawler off the Wexford coast – and has no problem making a complete eejit of himself for the camera.

Last week’s episode took our Baz into Sweden’s Arctic wastelands, 300 kilometres inside the Arctic circle.So far so good because this really is tough terrai

n, and he is to be accompanied on his adventure by Ross Bowyer, an extreme survivalist from Guildford outside London, who trained with Ray Mears.

Baz’s problem is that he really plays it all for a laugh; in his defence he’s not afraid to send himself up but the frightened Bambi look wears a bit thin after a few minutes.

And then there are the clichés he returns to at every conceivable opportunity – this isn’t about experiencing the Arctic ... it’s about testing himself against Mother Nature.

But, as he reveals, in at the deep end was his middle name – which only goes to show that his mother had a quirky sense of humour to ensure that a funny name just got even funnier.

“It's freezing; it really is cold,” he reveals, which probably seems obvious to people because you are in the Arctic where his guide says it can hit minus 45 at times.

“It's kinda dawned on me how tough this is going to be,” he adds, as a giant penny drops on his head from the sky.

Still, he has been kitted out with a sleeping bag, a knife, an axe and a good warm coat that’s certainly fit for purpose and he spends his last night of warmth in a sami’s lavu with an open fire in the middle and enough reindeer skins to cover a small herd.

Next days it’s off into the open frozen country and by night they dig snow graves to sleep in, lined with wood from the forest in an operation that took three hours in the dark.

Even then they weren't finished, because Baz dramatically revealed: “Now we had to find food if we were to have any chance of survival.” And this after about eight hours out of the camp.

If only he’d asked the camera man – maybe he had a Twix or a Mars bar that could have tied them over to morning – but instead they have to try and trap fish overnight by walking across the frozen river and boring a hole in the ice.

For more, read this week's Connacht Sentinel.