Wearing a crash helmet and a lifejacket, Estelle from Tyneside lies in a big, floating, orange, inflatable … well it’s hard to know how to describe it really. It somehow manages to look like both male and female genitalia.
Estelle looks nervous, and with good reason. Two big men jump from a height and land together on the other end of the massive floating willy/fanny air cushion. Estelle is catapulted into the sky, simultaneously obeying all of Newton’s laws of motion. Including the fourth one, which states that if, in an inertial reference frame, an animate object (a geordie nan, for example), is subjected to a force that launches her into the sky, she will air-cycle, flail and wail with an intensity directly proportional to the highest point of her trajectory. Which in this case is pretty high – 9.43 metres to be precise. Or about two-and-a-half bungalows high, says Freddie, a former pedalo legend and sometime cricketer from Lancashire, who is presenting.
Eventually, Estelle comes back to Earth – well, a pool, thankfully, with a mighty splash. And we get to see it all a few times more from different angles, in slow motion, accompanied by Ace of Spades by Motörhead. She gives a thumbs-up to indicate that she is OK; then it’s the turn of Cudge, a black-cab driver from Essex.
The show is called Cannonball (ITV, Saturday) – “the fastest, wettest and most pointless competition on the planet”, explains Freddie (Flintoff). Yeah, enough of your Nordic bloody noirs and your Handmaid’s Tales, all that Guardian nonsense. This is what weekend television should be about: finding imaginative ways of putting grandmothers, cabbies, students, PE teachers and a former Miss Bournemouth into the water, from the highest possible height, with the least amount of dignity and the biggest possible splash. So, as well as the genital catapult, Estelle, Cudge and co also get to be human bowling balls – they are skimmed across the surface of the water like flat stones and launched down a gigantic, inflatable ski-jump slide. All for your entertainment.
It’s certainly going down well in our house. My boys, three and five, think it’s the best thing. They want to go to Malta (where it’s filmed) to have a go themselves. Even their mother – once no stranger to a water park (although less so these days) manages a smile.
So how is Cannonball different from Total Wipeout? After all, they both involve humiliating members of the public using inflatable props and a lot of water, so there is some crossover (OK, they’re basically the same). But the BBC show had a greater range of challenges (I still miss those big, red balls) if not quite the hugeness of the splash. But Freddie has a refreshing so-whatness in an age of ridiculously animated and overenthusiastic presenters. “Here’s the Cannonball cup, I don’t want it,” he says, handing the trophy over to the night’s eventual winner, Anna, a marketing manager from Wiltshire.
There are likable fellow hosts, too, including Frankie Bridge, formerly of the Saturdays, of course.
Someone had a giggle selecting the snippets of music for this: Queen for Gillian from Bangor’s headbanger-skimming ride; the Captain Pugwash theme for 73-year-old budgie-smuggler-wearing great-grandad (and navy veteran), Joe; Ed Sheeran for someone who looks a bit like Ed Sheeran; the Communards for Stephen the Bolton Beefcake because … because his last name is Somerville I guess.
It’s all a giggle. I’m not sure how long seeing people making tits of themselves and getting wet lasts, and they’ll have to expand the repertoire of torture to prolong the interest. But, for now, I think Cannonball could be a fixture in this house. Right, who wants to see Estelle again?
The Chase now comes in a family pack. You know, the one that’s kind of general knowledge meets The Fugitive. The Family Chase (ITV, Saturday) it’s called, so the entire Bennett family is being hunted down by professional quizzer Paul “the Sinnerman” Sinha, armed with his arsenal of trivia.
They almost do it, too – get away, with £19,000. But he catches them, with less than a second to spare and the Bennetts leave with nothing. A second! That’s so cruel. I think we know who’s to blame, though, don’t we, Mr Bennett? And who will be doing the washing up, tonight and for ever.
