THE BECKONING SILENCE Monday, Channel 4 IF there is any right-minded rationale behind the existence of Celebrities go Wild it is not readily apparent. There was obviously a brainstorming session in RTE that was stuck in the cranial doldrums and they eventually said, "Ah sod it, let's just rip off I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here."

Which they did, but there was a severe shortage of both celebrities and budget, so they just got whoever was hanging around the RTE canteen and threw them into a minibus and sent them off to Craggy Island. I swear that Michael Healy-Rae is gradually morphing into Father Jack Hackett.

Ah, but sure aren't they great characters? No, and how sad is it that the worst overacting on national television is now in 'reality' shows. That used to be the exclusive remit of Fair City. Even the hosts, Aidan Power and the Lesbian Nun, looked bored and faintly embarrassed by the whole affair, and they're actually being paid to fake enthusiasm.

About the only positive thing you could say about the programme is that at least it was short. And how ridiculously dull must the days have been if the highlights package featured at least four scenes of Michael HealyRae carrying a big bunch of sticks. Back in the studio/van: "He's great at carrying sticks, isn't he, Aidan?" "He is indeed, Lesbian Nun. Press your red button to see more."

If they were at least set interesting tasks perhaps that could have saved the show, like being forced to fight to the death armed only with a trident and a flame thrower, but their mission impossible on Thursday was to climb Croagh Patrick, something that old women do in their bare feet. You'd have to wonder as they whinged and bitched their way to the top if they spotted that there was a guy walking alongside them all the way carrying a great big camera on his shoulders.

And no, the fact that it's all for charity doesn't act as some kind of get-out-of-jail-free card for crimes against televisual entertainment. The entire country should get a percentage of their licence fee refunded.

Anyway, this couch was tuning in purely for the presence of Michelle de Bruin, Ireland's greatest ever Olympian, or so Jimmy Magee says. Her week got off to a bad start when she refused to appear on The Late Late Show ahead of being loaded into the minibus, a decision she presumably wouldn't have taken had she seen Pat Kenny's pandering interview with Robbie Keane. "And did the big bad media really make your Mammy cry, Robbie? I'm glad I have nothing to do with them. I heard they were using megaphones to get the booing started at Croke Park, and sure weren't the tabloids out all week working with the Cypriots on defending setpieces."

Predictably in her absence Kenny stuck the knife in, saying she didn't want to be quizzed about, well, you know, all that unpleasantness that went on a few years back. Or maybe she just didn't want to answer the same question put to all the contestants, as to what her luxury item to be brought along was. Why?

Because she chose to bring vitamin pills. You really couldn't make it up.

Or perhaps we're looking at this all wrong. Maybe De Bruin has developed a sense of humour about the whole affair and was making a hilarious joke for us all to chuckle along with. It seems unlikely though, and it's a shame that the week passed without her breaking her silence on the tampering scandal. If she continued to protest her innocence we'd be fascinated, and if she admitted her guilt we'd be riveted, but either way her continued silence on the matter is starting to resemble mobsters pleading the fifth.

The Beckoning Silencemay have sounded like a particularly pretentious Booker Prize winner, but it was in actuality an excellent documentary on the doomed attempt by Toni Kurz and his climbing companions to conquer the north face of the Eiger in 1936. The tragic tale was told by Joe Simpson of Touching the Void fame but his presence took away almost as much as it added.

Simpson is a very good storyteller, but he constantly compared the travails of the protagonists to his own incredible experience in Peru, a bad idea given that few documentaries could hope to match the towering genius of Touching the Void.

But this was essentially about people driven by obsession to attempt dangerous feats, and few people are better qualified than Simpson to express how the eerie silence of altitude can be such a seductive thing. Even as he articulated this though he had to acknowledge that mountaineering can be "an illogical thing, not justifiable in any rational terms." Ah, like the existence of Celebrities go Wild