TIMES are tight. Everywhere you look, cutbacks are being made and budgets slashed.

At least in the real world.

Over in the BBC’s impregnable thunder dome it’s a slightly different story.

They’ve wasted nigh-on £100 million on an abandoned IT project, piddled another huge fortune up the wall for a third series of national embarrassment The Voice, and they’re currently boring us senseless with £25 million snoozefest The White Queen.

So my hackles were well and truly raised, last Sunday night, when a continuity woman announced: “Guaranteed sun now on BBC2,” followed swiftly by the words: “Kate Humble and Helen Czerski”.

You see, this pair’s licence-fee-funded globetrotting is somewhat of a personal mini-crusade.

For the 2012 series Orbit: Earth’s Extraordinary Journey, they were forced to endure Bermuda, Mexico, Norway, Ecuador, Chile, Canada, Egypt, Argentina, Greenland, India, the US and, hardship of hardships, deep-sea diving, off the coast of Belize.

Since then, Hawaii was the reluctant Humble’s location for Volcano Live, while Czerski suffered a trip to Reims in France to sip champagne, on BBC4’s Pop! The Science of Bubbles, when a £4.99 bottle of cava, from Tesco Express, would have sufficed.

So excuse me if I was a bit sceptical when Dr Czerski opened their latest BBC2 round-the-world jolly, officially called The Secret Life of the Sun, by insisting they’d set up base at the Rutherford Appleton Space Laboratory in Oxford.

And that’s where they’d be staying, no doubt. Deskbound. Moving only for toilet breaks.

Indeed, there they remained. For all of six minutes.

At which point Humble got itchy feet: “To begin to understand the sun’s extraordinary power, we need the help of one of the most dramatic events in the astronomical calendar, a total solar eclipse.

“And to see that, I had to travel to the other side of the world...”

Of course you did.

“This is Cairns, in Australia.”

So began the now familiar intercontinental air-miles pattern, in between moments of helpful scientific explanations, such as “sunlight” is “light from the sun”.

Czerski: “550,000km down inside the core is a 16-million-degree furnace.

To understand how that vast pressure creates sunlight, I’ve come to the National Ignition Facility...”

In Smethwick?

“... in California.”

Humble: “The solar wind is a constant stream of particles flowing out from the sun.

“A small amount of its energy gets through earth’s magnetic field, with extraordinary effects, effects I had always wanted to see for myself.”

(And that’s why I’ve come here, to Lapland, to watch the aurora borealis.) Czerski, talking about solar storms knocking out electricity supplies: “We need an early warning system. And fortunately, there’s one in this building here.”

And where might that be, Helen?

Bradford? Luton? Back at Oxford?

“The Space Weather Prediction Centre, in Colorado.”

Still she wasn’t done. “Sunspots are zones of cooler plasma.

They’re like windows in the sun’s surface through which we can study what’s happening inside the sun itself.”

(And that’s why I’ve come here...) “... to the McMath Solar Telescope in Arizona.”

She did, however, offer a word of warning: “The research suggests the sun may be heading for an extended quiet period, what solar scientists call a grand minimum.

“Three hundred and fifty years ago, the previous grand minimum coincided with brutally harsh winters in Europe and North America.”

Only one thing for it then.

For their next BBC2 series, Humble and Czerski had best avoid that area.

Bermuda, Australia, Argentina, Egypt and deep-sea diving, off the coast of Belize, are nice, I hear.

Spudulike awards

● Sky1’s Mad Dogs’ mind-altering finale.

● Holly Willoughby making BBC1’s singing contest even more of a laughing stock by announcing: “The winner of The Voice 2003.”

● Andy Murray tearfully unburdening himself of Dunblane massacre memories in the most dignified manner, with Sue Barker’s sensitivity, on The Man Behind The Racquet.

● BBC’s John McEnroe demonstrating how sport punditry should be done, topping it by poking fun at Victoria Azarenko’s boyfriend and LMFAO berk Redfoo for wearing glass-less spectacles, on Wimbledon Today.

● The One Show sticking Patrick Kielty in a “cryo sauna” at -170C, like Han Solo being turned into Jabba the Hut’s wall-hanging in The Empire Strikes Back.

● The Apprentice’s Alex Mills popty-pinging his way through Myles’ microwave ready-meal pitch.

● I swear this is true: during C4’s The Man With The 10-Stone Testicles, this commercial break voiceover: “More and more families are discovering Nutella. Each 15-gram portion contains two whole hazelnuts.” Glorious.

Spuduhate awards

● BBC1’s Wimbledon coverage forcing TV’s best quiz show Pointless into an unnecessary hiatus.

● CBBC puppet Hacker T Dog co-hosting the weather with Carol Kirkwood, on BBC’s Wimbledon coverage.

● The Michelle Larcher de Brito v Maria Sharapova Wimbledon match sounding like synchronised childbirth.

● Owen’s magical disappearing stubble between getting up from his armchair and answering the doorbell, on Corrie.

● The Apprentice’s Jordan using the phrase: “The purchasing manager,” when he meant: “Mum or Dad”.

● Following 139 complaints about that low-cut dress on The Voice final, the spineless BBC apologising for Holly Willoughby owning a pair of breasts. It should also apologise for the BBC not having the balls to treat the complaints as they should have done.