PLAYER POWER (Shows you haven't missed after all)

Feast

BBC iPlayer

(and BBC4, Wednesdays, 9pm)

Conflict of interest alert! Presenter Stefan Gates is an old friend, so of course I'm a big fan. But I'd enjoy this series anyway - travel, food and personable presenter with an easy style: what's not to like? 

In this first episode he visits India. First he's a guest at a three-day society wedding in Rajasthan (why don't we have cricket matches at British weddings?). Generously, he does not compare it to PoshnBecks' nuptials, even though he must have been sorely tempted. In fact, Stefan humanises something that seems all façade - and eventually the incredibly overprivileged families come across sympathetically.

Later, he visits Kerala for the Onam festival. Whereas the food is rather glossed over in the wedding section, there is some good insight into Keralan cooking here. But the highlight is when our man gets shaved and painted like a tiger for a parade. (He still had a yellowish tinge when I saw him about a week after he got home.) 

As the first white boy to join in this part of the festival, he attracts a lot of media attention and accidentally assaults a local TV reporter. The Indian equivalent Dennis Norden (Dinesh Norden?) will already have bought up that clip.

Just one point of order - Gates claims the hypnotic tiger dance is like being at a rave in the 80s. Rave, Stef? When we DJed together in 1989, you kept on putting on James Brown records while I was trying to play 808 State and A Guy Called Gerald.