The new series of Celebrity Race Against the World drops four famous pairs into Malaysian Borneo with one job: get to Melbourne, Australia — 7,500km away, with no flights, no smartphones and no bank cards. The six-part run starts on Wednesday 28 October at 8pm on BBC One and iPlayer, and this season's route is the show's longest yet, crossing three countries and two continents entirely overland or by sea.
The rules are what make the show oddly useful travel inspiration. Each pair gets just £26 a day per person, can pick up temporary work along the way, and relies on paper maps, local buses, trains, boats and the kindness of strangers. The five checkpoints between start and finish are being kept secret until broadcast.
The line-up mixes musicians and broadcasters: Ella Eyre races with childhood friend Nana, Eurovision star Sam Ryder with his tour manager Kaz, veteran sports presenter Jeff Stelling with his son Matt, and siblings Princess (19) and Junior Andre (21) — children of Katie Price and Peter Andre — racing as a pair.
The starting point is Kuching, capital of Sarawak and better known as Malaysia's 'Cat City'. The name is no gimmick: 'kucing' means cat in Malay, and the city leans into it hard, with feline murals, statues, cat cafés and a whole cat museum housing more than 4,000 artefacts. Just beyond the city lies some of the planet's oldest rainforest — an ecosystem thought to be 130 to 140 million years old — where rivers and longboats are the practical way around, and orangutans, proboscis monkeys, hornbills and clouded leopards share the canopy.
The finish line is Melbourne, Australia's second city, where the teams will presumably have earned a few laneway coffees. Those narrow passages — packed with street art, small galleries, bars and eateries — are the classic first stop for anyone arriving in the city.
Why should a traveller care? Because the show is essentially a budget overland masterclass. Kuching makes a genuinely underrated gateway to Borneo: it's compact, walkable, cheap, and within easy reach of jungle national parks teeming with wildlife that would cost far more to see elsewhere. And the Borneo-to-Australia overland route the celebs are attempting gives a rough framework for anyone toying with an extended Southeast Asia trip — ferry and bus hops through Indonesia, or a flight shortcut if you're less hardcore than a reality TV contestant. Even if you never attempt the full 7,500km, the £26-a-day discipline and the 'ask locals, ditch the phone' ethos are worth stealing for any slow-travel adventure.
Episodes air weekly at 8pm on Wednesdays on BBC One and iPlayer from 28 October.
