Abseiling, helicopters, thermal baths: Griff packs a lot into his Alpine trek! CHRISTOPHER STEVENS review

Published: 19:01 EDT, 1 November 2026 | Updated: 19:01 EDT, 1 November 2026 Griff Across the Alps (Channel 4)Rating:Griff Rhys Jones wants one thing to be clear. 'This is not,' he insisted, 'one of those series where a celebrity goes on holiday.'Then he lowered himself into a bubbling thermal spring bath in the lee of Mont Blanc, and stretched out in bliss.We believe him of course. This isn't a jolly, an all-expenses-paid vacation. The former star of Not the Nine O'Clock News is hard at work. But it doesn't look like a bad job.The warm waters of the spa had been filtering down from the peaks through miles of rock for 6,500 years. 'That's quite a long time to run a bath,' he said, with a sigh of contentment.But determined to earn his fee, Griff packed a lot into the first leg of Across the Alps, a six-part journey taking him from Chamonix in France to Slovenia, via Switzerland, Italy, Austria and Germany. Much of it was remarkably strenuous for a chap of 72, including a bout of abseiling down a sheer rock face.'What I hope to experience,' he claimed, with a slightly forced chortle, 'is just a little bit of the sheer terror involved in mountain climbing'.Dangling from a rope with a harness strapped around his backside, he leaned backwards and let gravity do its work as slowly as he could.What I couldn't work out was how this sequence began with him already halfway down the cliff. How did he get there? Was he lowered from a winch? Lobbed up there by catapult? Griff water rafts along the Arve river in the first episode of his new Channel 4 show Griff Across The AlpsAt the bottom of the sheer drop, he met chef Jean-Marie. No sooner had Griff unbuckled his carabiner than he was learning how to cook fricassee au lard, or sausages in bacon fat.Not the sort of dish we tend to see our older comedians eating every week, then. I can't remember watching Bob Mortimer and Paul Whitehouse, who have both battled heart disease, basting a banger in bacon dripping, on their fisherman adventures.But Griff has been teetotal for more than 40 years, and has talked in the past about his strict diet after suffering from an eating disorder as a young man. With so many years of clean living behind him, his arteries are probably in better condition than most.He certainly coped well with the altitude, keeping up a steady stream of chunter even at 12,500ft, visiting the Refuge de Goudet – a stone dormitory for climbers preparing to make their final assault on the Mont Blanc heights.He didn't have to slog up there on snow shoes. A maintenance helicopter gave him a lift. But the heights left his knees wobbly. After the pilot dropped him off, Griff clung to a railing and watched a cement mixer being lowered to the waiting crew.'I'm just holding on for dear life here,' he gulped. 'One slip and you go thousands of feet down.' His free holiday is coming at quite a cost.