Some years ago, the English adventurer Benedict Allen made the first solo crossing of the notoriously inhospitable but hauntingly beautiful Sand Dune Sea and the Kunene wilderness area of Namibia, in southwest Africa.
He filmed himself doing it.
TV audiences were treated to numerous excruciating closeups of Allen developing a formidable collection of boils, sores and Technicolor sunburn; all of this, interspersed with piteous groans and cracked monologues on how damn hot and murderous it was.