Hotel I wish I hadn’t checked out

FORMER Westlife crooner Brian McFadden, pictured, said on The Jump that his skeleton bob run was the worst thing he’d ever done. Brian, some of us have not forgotten that cover of Seasons in the Sun.

Otherwise, I quite enjoyed the return of Channel 4’s sadistic sports show, with its implied suggestion that the best thing we can do with a truckload of minor celebrities is strap them to a teatray and send them down a mountain at 150mph.

I’m rather more ambivalent about The Real Marigold Hotel, where mildly famous older people are sent on a jolly to explore the sights, sounds and smells of living out their pensioner years in Jaipur, in a programme patterned as a sort of Celebrity Come Die With Me.

I can’t help thinking that Miriam Margolyes fretting over being made to help with the washing-up, and Wayne Sleep twittering about rediscovering spirituality, are much less intriguing than giving a bunch of Govan OAPs a similar chance to test out retirement in a foreign culture.

There would be fewer mission statements, more genuine curiosity from the new arrivals, and rather less showboating to camera. ‘I don’t eat fish away from the coast,’ said Jan Leeming.

And when the Jaipur geriatrics held a party for the locals, no one could resist the chance to seize the limelight. Sylvester McCoy did I Belong to Glasgow on the spoons, Wayne tapdanced, Patti Boulaye sang and Miriam told everyone she was in Harry Potter. It was like an It Ain’t Half Hot Mum concert party.

So far, the only endearing one is Barry George – who arrived in India with a bag of medications the size of Santa’s sack and a dartboard.