Even the jungle can’t hide your past
WELL, one week in and one contestant down. Which, in the current climate, is probably a result for the producers.
As you’ve undoubtedly seen – whether you wanted to or not – one of the slebs, a blogger called Jack Maynard (nope, me neither) has been sent home from the jungle because of stupid social media messages he had posted when he was 16.
So, as soon as ITV learned that they had a potentially offensive participant on their hands, they bravely ran away from any further controversy by unceremoniously booting him off the show.
This brings up a few interesting points.
Firstly, how difficult is it to check a young blogger’s social media history?
After all, his name had barely been announced before hacks started rummaging through his old statements. If they can do that in the space of a few minutes, then you’d be forgiven for thinking the producers might have thought of doing the same thing before they blew a small fortune flying him to Australia, arranging a programme around him and... then flying him straight back again.
The conspiracy theorist might be forgiven for thinking this was all part of a cynical ratings grab with the hapless Maynard left in the role of patsy, but even that doesn’t really make sense – the show is still a ratings behemoth and with all the attention on Ant McPartlin’s recent travails with drink, drugs and depression, it’s not like they need another back story.
No, it looks like this was a case of the oldest mistake in the book – human error.
Let’s put it this way, whoever was supposed to do due diligence or even the most perfunctory of background checks will probably be looking for another job the other side of Christmas.
The other, more interesting aspect to this row is that we now seem to be living in a world where outlandish predictions in The Onion are coming true.
They warned that in years to come, nobody will be able to run for election or participate in any sort of public life for the simple reason that everyone will have been hanged by what they said years ago on Facebook.
It was a joke, of course, but one which is becoming increasingly prescient...
Curb Your Enthusiasm (Sky Atlantic, tonight, 10pm) has been even better than we had hoped. Having somehow managed to convince the Iranians to lift their fatwa on his head, they’ve even given Larry the go ahead for his latest production, Fatwa! The Musical – but only if he can get one of the performers from the musical Hamilton to play the lead role.
It’s completely bonkers, but he’s simply head and shoulders above anything else that is being aired right now.