Robson Green is a nude Robinson Crusoe - but hides his Man Friday!

Robson Green is a worrier. He worries about insects crawling into his crevices and ‘having a party’.

He worries about doing himself a mischief with his machete: ‘One wrong move and that’s your femoral artery gone.’

He worries that his chicken won’t lay eggs, that he won’t catch fish and that filtering and boiling his water won’t be enough to sterilise it. ‘Aww!’ he moans. ‘I’ve got a terrible sense of foreboding.’

On a desert island, forced to survive on nothing but his own ingenuity, Robson is about as much use as Anne Boleyn’s hatstand.

On the other hand, his name sounds quite like ‘Robinson’. That’s reason enough to maroon him on a lump of rock in the South China Sea and call it Robson Crusoe: A Surprising Adventure (ITV).

The one real achievement of this show was its refusal to fib. Robson made a hopeless hash of everything, and this one-off documentary did not attempt to disguise the fact.

It all started to go wrong before he even got ashore at North Guntao, 300 miles above the equator off the Philippines. Crusoe was shipwrecked, of course, and no one expected that level of realism from Robson, but it was a bit much to turn up aboard a luxury motor launch, posing on the prow like Kate Winslet in Titanic.

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Within three hours, he was being rescued and rushed to hospital with food poisoning. He spent the next two nights in a makeshift hospital bed at a hotel with a drip in his arm. If there hadn’t been a medical unit on standby, Robson would have been dead on the first day.

In the novel, Crusoe was fortunate to find a few of life’s essentials washed ashore. When he returned to the island on Day Three, Robson wasn’t taking that chance — he brought mosquito nets, a tent, shaving cream, a snorkelling mask and flippers, and a canoe.

He also brought swimming trunks, though he didn’t need those. Perching his camera on a rock, he filmed a skinny-dipping sequence — though careful editing spared us the sight of his Man Friday.

In fact, the 100-degree heat did seem to send him quite doolally.

He constructed a soccer team from bamboo poles with coconuts for heads, and spent an afternoon practising his stepover skills as he dribbled past them, commentating as he went. Yes, he’d brought a football, too.

The only bit he took seriously was the fishing: Robson is a keen angler and the main attraction of the trip for him was the chance to drop a line from his canoe in the open ocean, with hermit crabs for bait.

The Great Interior Design Challenge features (left to right) Daniel Hopwood, Tom Dyckhoff and Kelly Hoppen

Apart from that, it’s hard to see the point of the whole exercise. It’s hard to see the attraction either of The Great Interior Design Challenge (BBC2), back for a fourth series with judges Kelly Hoppen and Daniel Hopwood.

Contestants are let loose in ordinary homes with just £1,000 to spend on materials and two days to redecorate from skirting board to ceiling.

Then Hoppen and Hopwood hop by and criticise the candidates for slapdash work.

Of course the result is rushed — anyone who has wallpapered the spare room knows you start in February, take a break after Easter, get back to it when you’ve had your summer holiday and finally give up at Christmas.

The following February, you try again. Two years is a realistic time frame, not two days. Only the blindest optimists would invite BBC film-makers on a tight budget into their homes, but one couple had such high hopes they were in orbit.

Homeowner Jane wanted her bedroom redone in a style that mingled Versailles and Provence — rustic yet regal. All for a thousand quid in two days, remember.

No surprise that what she got was peach paint, metallic cushions and a picture frame filled with tatty lace strips. ‘That makes my toes curl,’ Daniel said. ‘I personally don’t like it, that’s my only concern,’ warned Kelly.

If you’re looking for design ideas, don’t look here. On the other hand, why else would anyone watch? This was another show without any real point.

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