Tribe (BBC2); Manhunt: Fireraiser (ITV1): ANTHROPOLOGIST Barry Parry doesn't observe, he experiences. Rather than just film the lives of remote tribes, he goes off and lives with them.

In the impenetrable forest of West Papua he sought out the last uncontacted people on earth. The Kombai practised cannibalism until recently. He had his fingers crossed that they really had stopped and he wasn't on the menu.

He'd heard stories of headhunters killing and eating other tribesmen who'd murdered relatives. Clearly, this isn't the sort of trip you read about in a Thomas Cook brochure.

Armed with grisly tales of cannibalism and the accepted currency of tobacco to buy his way into their company, Parry accepted an invitation to live with them in a treehouse.

Hunting wild boar, cooking without pots and pans, and eating raw sago was fine. It was like a real life I'm A Celebrity, one big bushtucker trial but without the tantrums and tension.

Parry's eyes watered when a thorn was pushed through his nose. He popped a saga grub into his mouth, noting it tasted like "an explosion of pus".

He looked understandably apprehensive when a tribesman put one of these fat creatures in his ear to eat the wax. As tribesmen dissolved into laughter, he realised he'd been had and was the butt of a joke. It was a much smaller maggot that was put in his ear to chomp on the wax.

But even Parry went weak at the knees when they proposed subjecting him to another tribal ritual - inverting the penis, pushing it back into the body and wrapping what's left with a leaf. Whatever you do, don't try that at home.

Parry didn't know how to refuse this dubious honour without causing offence, so he took off his trousers and let them get on with it. "That was very strange," he managed to say, sitting down after feeling faint. "They rolled my foreskin, did a sudden movement with the hand and it went back in. It was very unpleasant."

My eyes watered in sympathy, even though the camera remained discreetly on Parry's upper body. His verdict was that it was bizarre and painful but that he felt an amazing bond had grown between him and the tribesmen.

As for cannibalism, he didn't see any but didn't rule out that it still happened. But his overall impression - and mine too - was of a gentle, welcoming, loving people. "Aggressive is the last word I'd use," he said.

Chilling describes Manhunt: Fireraiser, although as it concerned a serial arsonist, chilling isn't the right word. In the 1970s, the fireraiser set fire to 30 buildings, at least eight of them causing death. Yet no-one put two and two together to link the fires, dismissing them as accidental. The programme highlighted inadequate investigations, with no help sought from forensic experts.

It was seven years before a detective's hunch brought all the cases together and led to the arrest of Bruce Lee, an unhappy teenager who'd changed his name to that of the kung fu star. He'd been rejected by his mother as a child and hated people who had homes because he didn't have one. "My master is fire," he told police.

Published: 18/01/2005