Real Men

Watching BBC’s “Real Men” documentary tonight has been really interesting – it’s been about guys who work on the North Sea oil industry, and spend a month in a diving chamber, pressurised to the depth they’ll be working at so that the guys don’t need to keep woring about the bends, decompression stops etc.

It’s certainly a job I couldn’t do – I couldn’t spend that length of time in a small confined space. Also, a month spent at the pressure equivalent of 200m, which is scary. (As they said, it’s just about the height of two Big Bens)

But at the same time, man what comedy value – the month at the bottom is spent breathing helium mix, rather than air – so half the programme involved them all talking in Micky-Mouse voices. Deadly serious, but very funny.