KEY POINTS:
Jenny Shipley, about to set off on her Intrepid Journey to Namibia, said, to the camera, "I retired from politics in 2002, so I ask myself: what on earth am I doing letting cameras back into my world?"
Why do people do it? Mostly the people who go
on these jaunts (Intrepid Journeys, TV1, 9.30pm, Tuesday) could afford to pay their own way. You can pay for discomfort too if that is what you're after. Bum-bruising trips in vans and the inevitable van breakdown and a bit of cultural misunderstanding or tension are for sale in most places.
The tension in Jenny's case came from bowling up to a township where she ate a bit of something disgusting that might once have been an animal. Some of the locals were having a liquid lunch.
"I think," said the former prime minister, "people have been pleased to see us, but I don't think we should push our luck."
That might well be electioneering instinct kicking in - the equivalent of turning up to a pub in Otara, say, when you've just cut benefits - but sticking around to see what might have happened might have made for better telly.
The trouble with the format is that trying to make deep and meaningful observations on foreign situations is like going to the local in Otara and trying to make deep and meaningful observations.
Jenny went to see the Himba people and observed that the women were "dignified, beautiful, actually, and so practical ... These women seemed completely content in the setting they found themselves in. So the lesson there for me to take home: I think it's a mistake for us to think that everything developed in Western in best." So the lesson there is, well, what? That we might be better off sitting around in the mud, topless? Thank goodness for small mercies: Jenny did not go native. There was a funny moment when some of the Himba began painting Jenny with red body paint. "I have to be brown as well? Ha, ha, ha."
What on earth did they make of her? "What job did you do?" a young man asked. "Well, I was Prime Minister in New Zealand," she said. "You?" said the young man, thinking, possibly, "what the hell are you doing this daft telly programme for then?"
Hardly anyone can pull off interacting naturally with foreign types when there's a camera in your face but, dear oh dear. Jenny shouted some kids a cold drink. "Cola! Cola! Cheers!" she coaxed. "Good fella. He's got it. Cheers!"
She spoke to people on the streets and observed that "a number of the black people are surprised to be being spoken to, so I fear there is still quite an issue here".
That is quite possibly true but I fear they might simply have been surprised by being spoken to by Jenny, valiantly wearing her make-up and good earrings - and speaking very slowly, enunciating each word.
There was a farm stay. She told the farmer that she once had a farm. "A big farm. With cattles and 2000 sheeps." She didn't mention that she used to be a primary school teacher.
At the end of her journey, she said she'd been able to "be an ordinary person with dust in my hair and stones in my shoes and enjoy every aspect of it as just Jenny".
Jenny the politician would probably have known that letting cameras back into your world is rarely a good idea.
