ICE to meet you
TV Times|April 09, 2022
LEE MACK and HOLLY WILLOUGHBY on how wellness guru Wim Hof is changing lives in their celebrity survival series
TESS LAMACRAFT
ICE to meet you

FREEZE THE FEAR WITH WIM HOF NEW TUESDAY, 9PM, BBC1 REALITY

The Italian Alps provide a breathtaking backdrop as eight brrr-ave celebrities face a variety of chilly challenges under the guidance of extreme athlete Wim Hof for an epic new BBC1 adventure series.

Hosted by Holly Willoughby and Lee Mack, the six-part spectacular Freeze the Fear with Wim Hof sees the Dutch motivational guru - famed for his astounding feats of cold endurance - push the group, who are living together in a mountainside tented village, to their very limits with increasingly difficult tasks in sub-zero temperatures.

Here, Holly, 41, and Lee, 53, tell us more...

You've been a fan of Wim's for a while, haven't you, Holly?

HOLLY Yes, I live in a scaredy-cat world, I'm afraid of everything, so anything that I can find to help with that, to add to my toolkit, is great.

A friend gave me one of Wim's books. I read it and thought, “This guy is amazing!

I started doing some of the breathing exercises, got the app, and told my husband how brilliant Wim was, which became the seed for this programme [Holly's husband, Dan Baldwin, is the show's executive producer).

And, Lee, what did you make of Wim Hof?

LEE He's amazing, and he's also a proper bona fide lunatic. Everyone has a kind of onscreen persona, but Wim is the real McCoy. If he shows you the splits on camera, he'll be showing you the splits off-camera, too.

What appealed to you both about the show's format?

LEE I've never done a show like this before and I'm not normally a massive fan of this genre of television. But what I loved was, with this there's no fakeness; there's no negativity or trying to starve people to deliberately get rows going like we see in a lot of TV.

This story is from the April 09, 2022 edition of TV Times.

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This story is from the April 09, 2022 edition of TV Times.

Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.