Great Wigg out
THIS Morning, Wednesday, 11.31am, “Rylan is Holly Willoughby: Rylan, with us at 12.15pm. have you what showbiz scoops got all the got?” Rylan: “I’ve 12.18pm, scoops.” Fast-forward, and Kylie Rylan: “Josh Sasse story. We Minogue. Real sad has gone don’t know what on.” All. The. Scoops. WHAT a difference half a year makes. At Rio 2016, Tour de France winner and nine-time world champion Sir Bradley Wiggins became the Olympic Games’ most decorated Briton.
One retirement and a banned steroid “therapeutic use exemption” controversy later and he’s goofing around throwing a snowball at a C4 camera for his introduction on The Jump and realising: “I was a successful Olympian and now I’m skiing like a prat.” That’s not the worst, though.
He’s also being interviewed by Davina McCall and racing around some gates against comedian Mark Dolan, host of short- lived TLC panel show If Katie Hopkins Ruled The World.
Although Mark did also, to be fair, beat Shaun Ryder and Corrie’s Helen Flanagan on Come Dine With Me with his pea soup, three bird roast and plum duff.
So you can see why they snapped him up for a winter sports competition. We also have some predictable faces from reality TV, such as Gareth Thomas, Lydia Bright, Spencer Matthews, Caprice and Louis Smith.
But along with Wiggo they’ve booked some interesting characters – taekwondo “head-hunter” Jade Jones, England rugby World Cup winner Jason Robinson and Liverpool football “god” Robbie Fowler, who looks like a one-man avalanche in the making.
They’ll still struggle to overcome this show’s inherent flaws, however. The main reason to tune in – the risk of celebs getting seriously injured – lost its allure last year when they got seriously injured.
We were in hospital again within half an hour when Vogue Williams ruptured knee ligaments and Davina asked: “Are you going to get on skis again?”
Vogue: “One hundred per cent. If The Jump comes back next year, I’m going to be in it to win it.” So that’s a no, then.
The series’ most pressing issue, though, remains the jump itself, TV’s biggest anticlimax. Terrifying it no doubt is to do, the effect as a TV spectacle is like watching a drenched teabag plop off the spoon into a food bin. We didn’t even get THAT from Big Brother winner Josie Gibson, who chickened out and had Davina announcing: “Josie is not going to jump. Which means it is a no jump.”
The brutal truth is we are one Wiggo injury and withdrawal away from a non-event, and he’s already had a torn calf scare.
This series desperately needs his bucking of reality TV conventions, which had him pulling faces behind the host’s back and answering her question: “Why did you choose The Jump?”
Bradley: “Just to p*** off the Daily Mail.” Davina: “We’re not allowed to say that word.” Indeed. Children might be watching. “Just to p*** off the D**** M***.” Much better. ALWAYS risky to revisit a social experiment, as C5’s The Great British Benefits Handout Changed My Life narrator proved. “In the year since receiving £26,000 in exchange for signing off benefits, our families have transformed their lives.” And by “transformed” he means one-third of the recipients, single mum Rachel, has signed back on and remains jobless after 20 years out of work.