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Last night's TV: When Hell Freezes

When his Antarctic trip went wrong, Douglas Mawson ate his dogs. Did he eat his partner too?
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When Hell Freezes
'Mawson was knocking around down there in inappropriate clothing around the same time as Scott and Amundsen' ... Douglas Mawson, above right, When Hell Freezes (Channel 4)

Shackleton, Scott, Amundsen, Mawson ... Mawson? Who the hell is he? Douglas Mawson? Of them all, the most extraordinary story of polar endurance is his, we're told, in When Hell Freezes (Channel 4). So how come no one's ever heard of him?

Turns out he was this Aussie, an "ambitious young player in the Antarctic arena" apparently, who was knocking around down there in inappropriate clothing round about the same time as Scott and Amundsen. He and his two companions, Ninnis and Mertz (people didn't really have first names back then), set off with wooden sledges, dogs, pemmican, all that stuff, to explore the interior of Antarctica. But Ninnis fell down a crevasse with some of the dogs and nearly all of the provisions, leaving Mawson and Mertz with very little food and a very big walk across the ice back to the good ship Aurora.

It is an extraordinary story. They were bashed by blizzards, their feet fell apart, they had almost nothing to eat, they wasted away. Anyone out there needing to get down to a size zero quickly should seriously consider trying the Mawson Diet - extreme calorie-burning and body punishment coupled with almost no food at all. Atkins has nothing on Mawson.

There was no food for the remaining dogs, of course, and it wasn't long before the dogs became the food (this could put some people off the Mawson Diet, I suppose). All their favourite faithful friends went into the pot. Fido! Din dins! Here boy! At least nothing went to waste - paws, noses, absolutely everything was eaten.

"I say, Mertz," I can imagine Mawson saying, as he tried to force a hairy piece of rubbery gristle between cracked lips. "This stew of yours really is the dog's bollocks, ha ha ha."

Mertz wouldn't have been joining in the banter, being Swiss and very sick. He went downhill rapidly (as the Swiss tend to, in snow) and started behaving erratically, biting off his own fingers. It turns out he was suffering from vitamin A poisoning, from eating too many dogs. One morning Mertz didn't wake up. And this is where the big controversy of the expedition lies. Did Mawson then eat Mertz?

Fast-forward almost a century, and modern-day polar adventurer Tim Jarvis is following Mawson's sledge tracks. He and his pal John are doing the same journey using the same old clothes and equipment that Mawson and Mertz had - canvas tents, woolly jumpers, tweed jackets practically. And for food they have with them a pack of strays hand-picked from Battersea ... no, that's not true. Instead of dog, they're eating kangaroo meat - same meagre portions, different menu. And I think that's cheating. There's a gastropub down the road that does kangaroo; they may as well be eating char-grilled seabass on a bed of seasonal vegetables. They don't even have to kill the kangaroos.

The only other difference from Mawson's trip is that Tim and John have a film crew alongside them, complete with all the modern kit, a doctor, snowmobiles, a helicopter only a radio call away etc. Quite a big difference, really.

Back in 1912, Mawson fell into a crevasse, hauled himself out again, struggled on. He was driven by early-20th-century grit, and a burning desire to be reunited with his beloved fiancee. Oh, is that a picture of her? Maybe just the first motivation then. I see, she was loaded; what, Mr Mawson, first attracted you to the mining heiress Paquita Delprat? Her enormous chin, perhaps? Anyway, he makes it back to base, and goes on to live a long, and presumably very comfortable, life with Paquita.

Tim makes it, too, though he doesn't manage to clamber out of his crevasse - he has to get his team with all their equipment to pull him up. This guy just hasn't got what it takes.

It's less clear what's driving Tim on. I don't know what his domestic situation is, or who's waiting for him back home.

He seems to think that he's shown that Mawson didn't eat Mertz, but I don't understand how he reached this conclusion. Because he's done a similar journey without eating John? Maybe if he had eaten John, he'd have got out of the crevasse on his own.

At the end of Tim's trip, he's lost 20 kilos and five inches from his waist. So at least he's proved something: the Mawson diet works. Well, the modern version, Mawson-lite - with Skippy replacing Fido. And maybe Mertz.

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