22-04-2025
Traitor Harry seems like a nice guy - but will he stab everyone in the back? CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews BBC2's Pilgrimage: The Road Through The Alps
Pilgrimage: The Road Through The Alps (BBC2)
Unfair though it is, every time I hear ex-Traitor Harry Clark speak, my guard goes up. His lips are moving — he must be lying.
The 24-year-old former lance-corporal in the Royal Artillery scooped the £95,000 jackpot in last year's series by convincing everyone he was a nice guy, before stabbing them one by one in the back.
He seems like a really nice guy on Pilgrimage: The Road Through The Alps too. I'm just waiting for him to push the other six celebrities off a mountain pass. Maybe, like Moriarty, he's biding his time until they reach the Reichenbach Falls.
'Celebrity' is the loosest of terms here. There's a former boy band member called Jay-from-The-Wanted, actress Helen Lederer, and Paralympian Stef Reid. Jeff Brazier is on the trip, of course: it appears to be a contractual obligation that he appears on all BBC reality shows. No one knows why he's 'famous' but he's been on Celebrity Race Round The World, Celebrity Masterchef, Celebrity Who Dares Wins and I'm A Celebrity — so I think we can be certain he's a celebrity.
As for the other two, search me. Nelufar Hedayat is a journalist and podcast presenter, according to the press release, and Daliso Chaponda is a stand-up comedian from Malawi who featured on Britain's Got Talent.
It's reassuring to know that Daliso is a comic. As the seven trekked towards the snowline on the Austrian border with
Switzerland, he hooted, 'We're like proper pilgrimmin' right now, innit!' — and that had better be a joke because, if he really meant it, I might have to become an atheist.
This is the seventh series of Pilgrimage and the format is unvarying. The celebs take it in turns to buttonhole each other and ask searching questions about faith, God and the meaning of life.
The pretence is that these are intimate and private moments. In reality, they're surrounded by a camera crew, and the soul-searching is staged, though some of the confessionals were clearly heartfelt. Stef's description of how she lost her right foot, aged 15 while waterskiing, was horrendous — Jay looked like he was going to pass out.
Harry asked Nelufar, who refuses to wear the hijab and whose husband is not a Muslim, whether she ever feared she was going to Hell.
'Am I damned?' she mused. 'Yeah, I think so. But I don't know if I believe in the version of God that would damn me for living the life I pick.'
There's a fair bit of jostling for camera time. Jeff stripped off for a dip in an alpine lake, taking care not to get his hair wet. Gelled perfection like that doesn't happen accidentally, you know.
Harry and Jay also got their kit off to double up in an outdoor tub at a Swiss chalet. The hostel owner, a rosy-cheeked frau named Christine, bustled over to sluice them off with a shower hose. The smile on her face told us that this is one of the perks of her job.
