It has always been my understanding that there are only two types of celebrity reality show. There are the gruellingly physical blockbusters like Strictly Come Dancing, where participants dedicate months to learning a new skill from scratch but at least they’ll be seen by millions of people. And there are the easy payday shows like Celebrity Big Brother, where you turn up and do nothing and it doesn’t really matter because nobody’s watching.
And then there is The Jump.
The fourth series of The Jump starts on Sunday, and it still doesn’t make any sense. It’s the worst part of both types of show. Like Strictly, The Jump requires training and concentration non-stop. However, unlike Strictly, nobody really watches it. Audiences tend to hover around the two million mark; a fraction of Strictly’s audience, three times less than Dancing on Ice got in its death throes and half as much as the lowest audience for ITV’s Splash!, a notoriously bad show that nobody watched because life is short and far too precious to watch Omid Djalili fall off a thing into some stuff.
Bradley Wiggins has signed up for the new series of The Jump.
Sir Bradley Wiggins. Knight of the realm, Olympic hero, Tour de France winner and multiple world record holder Bradley Wiggins is appearing on The Jump. Even though Marcus Brigstocke claims it injured him so badly he couldn’t work for a year. Even though Tina Hobley was hurt so horrifically she now needs help bathing herself. Even though Beth Tweddle broke her neck on the show and had to seek out a psychologist to help her deal with the trauma of her injuries. Even though nobody actually watches the damn thing and he’d probably get as much exposure and remuneration by conducting a brief Loose Women residency. It doesn’t make any sense.
Admittedly, many of his fellow competitors do make a bit more sense. Wiggins will be appearing on The Jump with someone from TOWIE, someone from Made in Chelsea, someone who won Big Brother seven years ago, Camilla Parker Bowles’ niece, a woman who was married to Brian McFadden from Westlife but isn’t any more and Caprice. These are the sort of people you’d expect to appear on The Jump.
The appearance of Louis Smith even makes a scrap of sense, even though he’s a medal-winning Olympian, because he was recently suspended from gymnastics for mocking Muslims and this will provide him with a chance to publicly apologise for his behaviour between tortured screams after falling off a bobsleigh and dislocating all his arms and legs.
But Bradley Wiggins, and other contestants like Gareth Thomas and Jade Jones and Kadeena Cox, are all respected athletes. In the case of Jones and Cox, they’re still practising athletes. There’s a very strong chance that they’ll both end their careers by accidentally impaling themselves on a ski three minutes into a little-watched Channel Four programme. That’s no way to go. Who’s advising these people?
