The hard sell

`The older I get, the less tolerant I become of being treated by television like a child with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. No offence meant to Dr Jago Cooper but, if I’m going to consider spending a valuable hour of my fast-diminishing lifespan watching a documentary about Lost Kingdoms of South America, the very last thing that’s going to persuade me is being importuned in the manner of those men with microphones at street markets trying to persuade me to buy an amazing labour-saving device I never knew I needed, the Radish-o-Chop.

Probably, if I stopped to listen to the man, I’d find that the Radish-o-Chop was indeed an invaluable addition to my batterie de cuisine, especially once I’d been shown its dicing and paring functions and its versatility (not just radishes — but grapes and olives, too!). But I never get that far. As soon as I sense I’m being given the hard sell, I react in much the same way women do when they sense you’re really up for it or you haven’t had it in a while: it makes me want to run a mile.

And so it is with the civilisation, once a million strong, that lived in the monolithic temple city of Tiwanaku, 13,000 feet above sea level in the Bolivian Andes. Quite possibly I might have discovered that they were the most fascinating lost civilisation in all history. Maybe my interest would have been so piqued that I would have sold my children and my possessions, divorced my wife, and spent the rest of my days in a mountain hut in Bolivia, studying its crumbling stones. Then again, maybe not. Sadly we shall never know either way for after the first five minutes I gave up watching.