travel man christmas special jordan

Travel Man: 96 Hours in Jordan – what to expect from Richard Ayoade’s Christmas special with David Baddiel

The comedian has been given a new holiday mate, a new destination and double the amount of time for the christmas special of the travel show.

For Richard Ayoade ‘s Christmas present, Channel 4 gave him the gift of time. 48 more hours, specifically, doubling his usual TV show, Travel Man: 48 Hours In…,  to a whole 96 hours.

With the addition of an extra two days on his jollies, Ayoade chose another friend to accompany him on a short break for the festive special of his show. Here’s what to expect…

When is Travel Man on TV?

Travel Man: 96 hours in Jordan is on TV on Channel 4 on Thursday 27 December at 9pm.

Who will Ayoade be travelling with?

Writer and comedian David Baddiel will be joining Ayoade.

Where are they visiting?

The pair are headed to Jordan to visit some of the wonders of the world, take a trip to the desert and swim in the famous sea.

What will they be doing on their holiday?

Ayoade and Baddiel first arrive in Amman, where they will explore the ancient citadel. It being Christmas, the two men want to procure some gold, frankincense and myrrh, which requires a visit to the gold souk.

They’ll also go for a float in the Dead Sea – the deepest hypersaline sea in the world – then they’ll retrace Moses’ footsteps and climb to the top of Mount Nebo. They’ll also visit the ancient city of Petra, before heading back to Amman, where Ayoade and Baddiel will help cook a traditional Jordanian Christmas feast.

There’s also time for a quick adventure in the Wadi Rum desert, where the duo will travel by camel – of course – and a gyrocopter.

How long has Travel Man the series been running for?

Travel Man has been running since 30 March 2015, and there have been eight series. This is the third Christmas special.

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Travel Man Christmas Special: 96 Hours in Jordan

New. Comedian David Baddiel joins Richard Ayoade for a seasonal mini-break visiting world-class wonders, jaw-dropping deserts, and over-salted seas.

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What time is the Travel Man Christmas Special with David Baddiel on TV tonight?

The comedian and author has a home in Cornwall

• 12:21, 27 DEC 2018

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Cornwall's David Baddiel will join Richard Ayoade for a supersized seasonal minibreak in Jordan tonight.

The author and comedian, who as a home at Coverack on the Lizard peninsula with wife Morwenna Banks and their two children, will star in the Travel Man Christmas Special: 96 Hours in Jordan.

Over four frenetic days, David and the host Richard, visit world-class wonders, jaw-dropping deserts and over-salted seas, follow in the footsteps of Prophets and legends, and criss-cross the country by road, rail, rotor and hoof, picking up some special Christmas presents along the way.

After dropping their bags at the amazing W hotel in Amman they explore the city’s ancient citadel, cool down with a custom-made lollipop and chomp some of the best falafel in the world.

Then, in a token nod to seasonality Richard and David attempt to secure a biblical selection box of gold, frankincense and myrrh, starting with a visit to the gold souk.

Fleeing Amman, they take a briny bath in the Dead Sea before following in the footsteps of Moses and scaling Mount Nebo.

Heading south they take a ride on the Hejaz railway and sleep in pods in the Wadi Rum desert. Richard and David survey the sand by camel and Gyrocopter.

It’s on to gawp awestruck at the ancient city of Petra before hightailing it back to Amman to learn how to prepare a Jordanian Festive Feast.

Travel Man: 98 hours in Jordan will air at 9pm on December 27 on Channel 4.

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• Richard Ayoade [ 1-10 ]
• Joe Lycett [ 11- ]

Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention, Sep 7 - 9, 2023, Hunt Valley, MD

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Travel Man’s Best Episodes: feat. Bob Mortimer at the E Numbers Museum and the Happiest Richard Ayoade Has Ever Been

They went, but should they have gone!? Travel Man is back with brand new episodes!

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Since 2015, there’s been no need to go on a minibreak to a cultural European destination. Richard Ayoade and Joe Lycett have gone for us. They’ve waited at airport security lines displaying their miniature toothpaste tube in a clear plastic bag. They’ve bought mystery crisps from railway vending machines. They’ve been to the museums, tried the local delicacies and gone on the sightseeing tours, so that we could stay luxuriously put.

Indeed, for a good chunk of 2020, staying put was the only option, which is when Travel Man: 48 Hours In… really came into its own. During lockdown, you could spin the globe, choose a location, load up All4 (as it was then known), and have a packed weekend there from the comfort of your sofa. All the experience of short haul travel with none of the having-to-mime-migraine-symptoms-to-a-Hungarian-pharmacist. Bliss!

Now Travel Man: 48 Hours In… is back with four new Joe Lycett-fronted episodes starting on Friday March 22 at 8.30 p.m. on Channel 4 and Channel 4.com. Joe’s guests this time around are comedians Alan Davies, Desiree Burch, Adam Buxton and Jessica Fostekew. While Davies, Burch and Fostekew are all Travel Man first-timers, this is a repeat visit for Adam Buxton, who also went with Richard Ayoade to Lisbon back in 2016.

Respectively, the new travel guests are being taken to Italy’s Trieste, Finland’s Rovaniemi, Czechia’s Prague, and the Canary Island of Lanzarote. Expect a visit to the wind museum, scenes of eating sausages out of skulls, volcanic wine and some sleigh-riding (not necessarily in that order).

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To celebrate the show’s return, let’s salute some of its most entertaining trips from previous series.

10. Hamburg with Bob Mortimer

Adding “…with Bob Mortimer ” to anything makes it better. (Try it. The One Show… With Bob Mortimer. Who Wants to Be a Millionaire… With Bob Mortimer. Year 10 Parents’ Evening… With Bob Mortimer.) That’s definitely the case on this 48-hour stint in Hamburg, the high point of which has to be the visit to the German Food Additives Museum. It starts off niche, and just gets more niche from there as Mortimer encourages Ayoade to ingest out-of-date E numbers. A solid best-of list entry.

9. Amsterdam with Joe Lycett

Here’s the point at which Travel Man ’s producers must have scribbled down the note ‘ Joe Lycett – new host if Richard leaves?’ The two have more in common than you may think – they’re both sardonic clothes horses who run on irony – but while Ayoade’s persona leaves little room to express genuine delight, Lycett is a joy machine. We see it here when he’s confronted by a Dutch street organ that plays Wham. Immediately, he starts to jig, hands held aloft screaming “I feel so alive!”, while Ayoade nods along barely perceptibly. A strong audition for the main part.

8. Moscow with Greg Davies

Worthy of celebration solely for the local outfit Greg Davies wears at the traditional steam bath: a kind of toga worn with – as the Taskmaster describes it – a hat that makes him look like a sinister children’s character. Add to the outfit the ‘being whipped by two men using birch branches’ treatment that Davies volunteers to undergo, and we are entertained. See also: space food.

7. Split with Aisling Bea

This is Aisling Bea’s second time as a guest on the show and both are good fun, but this pips the other because it features what is officially the most adorable Travel Man sequence of all time: Bea and Joe Lycett walking extremely sweet rescue dogs from a local animal shelter along a dedicated dog beach. As Lycett puts it, “it’s the cutest day I’ve ever had and that’s saying a lot.” If a tiny puppy stand-up paddle-boarding doesn’t do it for you, then there’s also strudel-rolling, a fish cookery class, and a museum of frog taxidermy that genuinely makes you worry for humanity. Clearly mates who get on, these two are great company.

6. Copenhagen with Noel Fielding

The happiest Goth on Earth in the happiest place on Earth? That’s what you get with Noel Fielding in the Danish capital. The Mighty Boosh star giggles his way through open sandwiches, bakery windows, a beer museum and a tiny rollercoaster. They both love the fairground, and both appear to provoke genuine antipathy from their cycling tour leader Mike the Bike (he doesn’t like trouble), who makes every effort to ditch them mid-tour. The chemistry is good, the mood is… as relaxed as Richard Ayoade appears to get (key quote from Fielding: “I thought this was going to be a holiday, not one of your weird, anally retentive fright-fests.”) And they’ll always have Galoppen.

5. Berlin with Roisin Conaty

In which: they travel in a jazz lift, very much almost die on the road in what was voted the World’s Worst Car of 1975, improvise a blues jam session, and go to a bowling alley. Not a bowling alley but a kegelbahen, where Richard Ayoade appears to reveal genuine anger and a surprisingly intense competitive streak (plus a serviceable Daniel Day Lewis impersonation) when he refuses to leave until he gets a strike.

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Comedian, writer and actor Roisin Conaty makes an excellent audience for Ayoade’s patter, awkward Kula Shaker jokes, and the break’s Cold War theme in general. He’s great, she’s great, and it just works.

4. Hong Kong with Jon Hamm

An extended-length Christmas special, this is a joy of an hour. Watch as the former star of Mad Men and the former host of The Crystal Maze take a ludicrously short journey in a Rolls Royce, have their portraits ripped out of paper by an artist named “Uncle Man”, and get a foot massage – or, as Ayoade describes it, “an onslaught of unparalleled brutality”. (Squirming and grimacing under the touch of his masseur and telling him to stay the heck away is as aggressive as you’ll see the man). The best bit? When they get measured for dandy bespoke suits with which they are clearly – and rightly – overjoyed.

3. Ibiza with Jessica Knappett

Companionable banter is all very well, but sometimes it’s fun to witness a clash of personalities so extreme you wonder if it’ll end in violence. And that clash isn’t just Ayoade (sardonic, reserved) vs Knappett (wahey-the-lads! ‘BEEFA), but Ayoade vs Ibiza itself. Put simply, the party island/hippy hangout is his nightmare, and this episode features genuine appeals to camera for rescue. From what? From a gong bath, a surfing machine, the hotel where Wham’s Club Tropicana video was filmed, and from a hotel manager who insists on taking them to a place “where membership is a smiling face.” Despite Knappett’s appeals for Ayoade to have an open mind and go with the flow, his mind remains resolutely closed and stressed, and it’s quite a lot of fun to watch.

2. Miami with Rhod Gilbert

There’s no personality clash here. Ayoade and Gilbert are like two complementary grape varieties blended into the same refreshingly dry wine. It’s a wine that you’d think would be too acerbic for Miami’s brand of relaxed Cuban cool, but you’d be wrong. Humidity aside, they both have a great time on the Florida coast. They eat crab meat lollipops that cause Ayoade to break out in a spontaneous smile, and which Gilbert describes as the most amazing meal he’s ever had in his life. They wear crab bibs, are rubbish at beach yoga, nervous of alligators, live it up at a domino game and sip drink thick, sweet coffee and freshly squeezed juice you feel like you can taste. A beautiful combination.

1. Vienna with Chris O’Dowd

The best Travel Man episodes are the ones where chemistry between host and guest really chimes, and here, it’s unimprovable. This trip to Vienna with his The IT Crowd co-star Chris O’Dowd is the happiest Richard Ayoade has ever looked on screen – possibly the happiest he’s ever been in life? Perhaps that’s down to the relief of not having been the one to have accidentally smashed a snow globe in Vienna’s national snow globe museum (O’Dowd is now banned from Austria). Or perhaps he’s just relaxed, having fun and enjoying making his pal laugh over partially fermented grape juice and cheesy sausage. They eat apple strudel, drive hotrods, explore the sewers and ride a Ferris wheel as part of a locations tour for The Third Man , and generally have a lovely, lovely time.

HONOURABLE MENTIONS

Dublin with Mawaan Rizwan who is cute as a button and really did not enjoy wild swimming.

Milan with Morgana Robinson whose superior pasta-making skills leave Ayoade humiliated.

Iceland with Bill Bailey for boiling eggs in a geyser, the Icelandic punk jam and the hot tub hats.

Stockholm with Sally Phillips for Ayoade’s obvious discomfort and Phillips’ obvious joy at the ABBA museum.

Porto with Nish Kumar for Nish’s excitement about his religious wax buttocks.

Dubrovnik with Stephen Merchant for them going on the Game of Thrones locations tour without having seen Game of Thrones .

Travel Man: 48 Hours In… airs on Fridays at 8.30pm on Channel 4. All episodes are available to stream in the UK on Channel4.com . Series one to seven are available to stream on Plex and Prime Video in the US.

Louisa Mellor | @Louisa_Mellor

Louisa Mellor is the Den of Geek UK TV Editor. She has written about TV, film and books for Den of Geek since 2010, and for…

Travel Man: SerieS 4

Christmas special  .

Hollywood actor Rebel Wilson joins Richard for a fun-packed whizz round Florence in a mini-break mixing art, action, gelato, a drive in a classic Alfa Romeo, and some tripe. HOTEL:

AdAstra Hôtel Particulier

adastraflorence.com

FOOD AND DRINK:

Meracato Centrale Market for the Tripe Sandwich: www.mercatocentrale.it/en/mercato-centrale-florence   In Fabbrica Restaurant, dinner in the silver workshop: www.restaurant.pampaloni.com   Cappuccino and budino di riso at Ditta Artigianale: www.dittaartigianale.it   Find Gelato Pasco at: ​Gelateria Pasco, Piazza di Santa Maria Novella ​ ​ACTIVITIES: 

Florence Cathedral: www.ilgrandemuseodelduomo.it   Meracato Centrale Market for the Tripe Sandwich: www.mercatocentrale.it   Uffizi Gallery featuring The Birth of Venus by  Botticelli: www.uffizi.org   Accademia Gallery, featuring Michelangelo’s David: www.accademia.org   Rafting on Arno river: www.firenzerafting.it/en   Hire yourself a classic Alfa Romeo: www.chianticlassiccar.com   Truffle Hunter Walk!: www.trufflehunter.net   Hidden Florence App for a free walking tour with fictional tour guide Giovani!: hiddenflorence.org   Find the wax anatomical collection  at La Specola, The Museum of Zoology and Natural History: www.msn.unifi.it

EpiSode One 

Comedian Rob Beckett joins Richard Ayoade in Russia's cultural capital, for a post-Soviet itinerary including an armoured tank, caviar, vodka, and a herring in a fur coat. HOTEL: 

The Official State Hermitage

www.thehermitagehotel.ru/en/ FOOD AND DRINK:  Soviet Café Kvartirka: www.reca.rest/restaurants/KvartirkaVO   The world’s only Caviar Bar in the Grand Hotel Europe: www.belmond.com/grand-hotel   Singer Café: Nevsky avenue, 28, Saint-Petersburg, Leningrad Oblast, Russia, 191186 ACTIVITIES:  New Holland Ice Skating: www.newhollandsp.ru/en   Spa: www.thehermitagehotel.ru/en   Swan Lake: nab. Lebyazhyey kanavki, Saint-Petersburg, Russia   Horse and Cart Palace Square: Many available around the city   Metro station: Admiralteyskaya Coin Toss CHIZHIK-PYZHIK: Fontanka river embankment, Saint-Petersburg, Russia, 191023 ​Hermitage Musuem: www.hermitagemuseum.org/wps Ice Sculpture Festival at Peter and Paul Fortress, St Petersburg  

EpiSode TWO 

Richard and comedian Aisling Bea make a whirlwind tour of Hungary's fairy-tale capital, with selfies, goulash, cake, pubs, liquor, and a game of chess at the thermal baths. HOTEL:

www.lavendercircus.com/ FOOD AND DRINK:  Kehli Restaurant: www.kehli.hu/   Chimney Cake: Töltött Kürtős, Erzsébet tér 13, Budapest, Hungary, 1051   Ruin Bar:  ​en.szimpla.hu/szimpla-garden   Richard and Aisling tried Hungarian sparkling wine at the Piknik Pavillion: piknikpavilon.hu ACTIVITIES:  Fungarian tour: fungarian.hu Children’s railway: www.gyermekvasut.hu   Chair lift: www.bkv.hu/en/zugliget_chairlift   Széchenyi Baths: www.szechenyibath.hu Funicular: www.bkv.hu/en/buda_castle_funicular

EpiSode Three

Richard Ayoade packs his case and heads to the Canaries to discover what lies beyond the all-inclusive resorts of the volcanic island of Tenerife.  Making the trip from LA to join him is writer, director and actor, Lena Dunham. HOTEL:

Hotel Emblemático Casa Casilda hotel-emblematico-casa-casilda.tacoronte.hotel-tenerife.net/en/ FOOD AND DRINK: Guachinche: Casa Lito – Calle Tijarafe, 35, 38390 Sta Úrsula, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain ‘Barraquito’ accompanied by Morcilla Dulce (sweet black pudding) at : www.lahierbita.com ACTIVITIES: Whale watching Tour: tenerifesailingcharters.es/sailingenglish Stargazing: www.volcanoteide.com/en   Golf lesson: www.golfcostaadeje.com/en   Auditorio de Tenerife: Av de la Constitucion, 1, 38003 Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain   Mount Teide National Park, including the Roque Cinchado and the Las Canadas Luna Landscape ​Santa Cruz Sculpture trail: Rambla De Santa Cruz, Tenerife 

EpiSode Four

Richard and Rhod Gilbert's high-speed visit to Florida's famous hot spot takes in art, art deco, alligators, speedboats, an airboat tour of the everglades - and dominoes. HOTEL:

The Raleigh Hotel  raleighhotel.com FOOD AND DRINK: They had lunch at Joe Stone’s Crab:  www.joesstonecrab.com They stopped for a cold pressed juice at Jugo Fresh. ACTIVITIES: Speed boat tour with Captain Mike:  www.speedboattours.com Bingo with Miss Toto:  www.gramps.com   Air-boat ride in the Everglades:  coopertownairboats.com   Yoga on the beach:  3rdstreetbeachyoga.com   Wynwood Walls:  www.thewynwoodwalls.com El Cristo Cuban Restaurant, The Ball and Chain Bar and Maximo Park are all on SW 8th Street in Miami's Little Havana neighbourhood