Self Confessed acrophobe Kevin McCloud heads for the heights as he scales some very tall structures

Article Source:

© Radio Times 'Choices' section 13-19May 2000

Read an article from: (The Daily Telegraph – Television & Radio)

If you learn one valuable lesson from this quirky programme it will be never, ever to walk across a narrow plank at the top of the Forth railway bridge with your hands in your pockets. A workman did that once, in those far-off days before the Health and Safety at Work Act, and you can probably guess the rest.

The Forth Bridge is gorgeous, a true miracle of engineering, and every bolt seems to come with such a piece of folklore attached, which the amiable but possibly quite bonkers Kevin McCloud is happy to share with us from terrifying heights. For reasons best known to himself McCloud - who hates heights, suffers from vertigo and, before he started the series, could not climb - set himself the task of scaling the outside of six of Britain's tallest structures. The rest of the series features Salisbury cathedral, Liverpool's Anglican cathedral, Jodrell Bank telescope, central London's Lloyd's building and west London's Trellick tower.

You will probably find yourself feeling nauseated on McCloud's behalf as he whips around the bridge's upper reaches and says things like "there's just such a wicked temptation to jump". But Don't Look Down is not just about McCloud's derring-do; he examines the history of the bridge, which claimed the lives of 57 men during construction, and talks to those who love it and have reason to hate it.

However even a woman who lost her husband and son to accidents on the bridge cannot bring herself to feel any bitterness towards it, though she is not as enamored as the Railtrack employee who, as a child, used to insist upon his parents taking him there on birthdays and Christmas - so he could "show the bridge my presents". Alison Graham