TV review Watch out, Portillo, as Balls bounces back in style

HOW do you go from politics to freaking dancing? It is not a question that was ever directed at Gladstone, Pitt the Younger or any of the other illustrious holders of the post of Chancellor of the Exchequer, a role Ed Balls once looked destined to fill. But the query was raised by one interviewee

during the documentary Travels in Trumpland with Ed Balls (BBC2, Sunday, 9pm).

Balls had already supplied the answer in opening scenes from the 2015 General Election showing the voters booting their Labour MP out of office. From there, Balls took the yellow brick road to Strictly Come Dancing. Ten notorious weeks later, a new politics to telly star was born. But which kind will he be? A crash and burn Robert Kilroy-Silk, or a super soaraway Portillo, licensed to travel the world in bright trews?

One episode of three in, it is hard to tell. Balls could not decide if he wanted to be the clever chap who was once a Kennedy scholar at Harvard or a prize chump. Mostly, he plumped for the latter. Speaking of plump, it was soon clear that any weight Balls lost in the heat of Strictly had not stayed off. His Pooh belly was much in evidence when he donned a Union flag-emblazoned leotard and took to the wrestling ring. Before doing so he FaceTimed his wife, the Labour MP Yvette Cooper. “There’s something about the flag that accentuates your belly,” she replied supportively. A nation tittered. Even funnier was the moment he adopted the wrestling persona of “The British Bruiser” and came in waving like the Queen. Bonkers, as Pitt the Younger never said.

When he wasn’t playing the innocent fool abroad, Balls asked some decent

spots and Adam Henson meets a farmer with an unusually active online presence.