The Race For Everest (BBC2)

Holiday Airport (ITV1)

I conquered Everest the easy way - by plane. Forty of us set off from a Kathmandu airfield at six in the morning for the flight along the mountain range known as the Himalayas. As we flew over Everest the pilot allowed us into the cockpit two at a time to take a closer look at the highest mountain in the world.

We landed, clutching a certificate stating we had flown over Everest. The return in 1953 of the British expedition that had climbed the five-and-a-half miles of rock, ice and snow for the first time received a more excited welcome than us.

That news of reaching the top coincided with the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II is something that today's royal PR machine could only dream about. Here was a story with all the elements of high (in more ways than one) drama - an unconquered peak, a race against foreigners, bad weather, stiff upper lip British courage, and finally, a row over who actually put the first foot on the summit, Hillary or Tensing?

People got into a tizzy when Sherpa Tensing signed a piece of paper stating, "I reached the summit first", although one expedition member claimed he thought he was signing an autograph.

Press and politicians picked up on this, causing Hillary, on advice from the British Embassy, to rewrite his account. He substituted the words "I...stepped on the top of Everest" with "We stood on the summit".

The controversy died down but I don't doubt the British attitude was coloured by leftover feelings of Empire and a suspicion of foreigners. Tensing and his fellow sherpas were porters who, in the eyes of some, were there to carry loads not take the glory. This feeling wasn't shared by the climbers themselves. "On the mountain, they all worked together. On the ground, press and politicians tried to pull them apart," as the programme put it.

This excellent documentary didn't sensationalise the acrimonious end to an event heralded as the dawn of a new Elizabethan age. Remarkable film and photographs of the climb, together with revealing interviews with the mountaineers themselves and their loved ones, told the story vividly in words and pictures.

It was a fitting tribute to a remarkable story, although Joy Hunt, widow of the team leader, said it shouldn't be called the conquest of Everest - "You can't conquer a mountain, it's too large, too beautiful, too wonderful".

Pauline in Holiday Airport kept her feet on the ground, but her holiday proved as taxing as any mountain climb. She and husband Ron were taking a 1,000-mile motorbike tour of India. That's not my idea of a holiday - riding ten hours a day in temperatures of up to 35 degrees on Indian roads, which resemble a demolition derby.

Uneasy rider Pauline, who'd only been biking three months, got off to a bad start, collapsing with heat exhaustion and falling off her machine into the path of oncoming traffic.

"How do you feel?," she was asked on her return.

"Alive," she replied.