Taking A Dive: The balcony boys

"Authorities warn over hotel jump craze." "Hoteliers demand action over 'jump' craze." "Man hurt in balcony fall." "Medical staff slam 'hotel jump craze'."

Four successive days, four successive and similar headlines, even down to the number of "crazes". Crazy. These front-pagers all come from "The Bulletin". While media in the UK were apparently bad-mouthing Mallorca because of the "craze", the local hacks of the press were doing their best to make sure that no one failed to know about it, even to the extent of producing what was basically the same story and of headlining with nuts stuff like "medical staff slam". Well, they weren't about to approve of it. "Balearics big up balcony battiness." "We're all bonkers, say the batty balcony boys." The paper even managed to include a question about the balcony diving in an interview with the Spanish ambassador to the UK. What's it got to do with him? For the record, he puts it down to cheap booze. He might have added idiocy and stupidity.

The annual ritual of people falling out of hotels has been taken to a new level this year, thanks to the variant on audience-surfing or stage-diving. Rather than a sea of people in an audience, there is, hopefully, a small sea of a pool to break the dive. The trouble is when there isn't, and the medics and hotel staff have to scrape up the mess.

Of course, no one much would know about it were it not for You Tube and for the press taking a delight in the batty balcony boys. And it is a delight, because it's "news". While balcony diving has suddenly caught on this year, the balcony has long presented a huge temptation to the half-brained tourist, determined to lose the remaining half in a fall. Ever since hotels decided on having adjoining balconies, nutters have attempted to climb from one to the other. Some years ago, I was in a bank. A chap with plaster on a limb, who looked as though he should have been in the bank wearing a balaclava and holding a sawn-off shotgun, explained the circumstances surrounding the plaster. Just about. It was hard to decipher the mix of Mancunian and Martian that he was speaking. It was all a laugh, though. Five in the morning, crashing onto a balcony below. Hilarious.

Why is the press getting so sanctimonious about it all? If some tosser wants to play at being Tom Daley and makes a big thud rather than a bigger splash, then it's no great loss. Not very pleasant if you happen to be on a sun-lounger as some customer of Moron Holidays slams into the beer on your table, but at least it's something by which to remember the holiday.

The "authorities" are planning on a shock and awe campaign to highlight the dangers of balcony-ing. What a brilliant idea. Bring even more attention to it. Just as campaigns to persuade dypso-nympho teenagers in Zante to not take on industrial quantities of industrial alcohol fuelled the tendency, so we might expect ever more tanked-up Icaruses flying into the sun and pool, or concrete.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.