BBC TV’s Neil Oliver, the presenter of Coast, his film crew and a cricket team nearly drowned on the treacherous Goodwin Sands in the Dover Strait when their RIB, Wind Rider, was swamped.

Oliver and 12 others were picked up after the cricket match went horribly wrong when easterly winds combined with a powerful spring tide to stymie the ‘match’.

Three lifeboats and a rescue helicopter were scrambled to pick them up. A spokesman for Dover Coastguard said: ‘Potentially it could have been much worse.’