"I'm A Politician, Get Me Into Prison"

If Ant and Dec were Mallorcan, they wouldn't be waking up the inmates of the camp but would instead be banging on the cell doors of the celebrity residents of Carretera de Sóller sin número, Palma de Mallorca, a rather different type of camp - the Penitentiary Centre of Palma de Mallorca, normal occupancy level, 1280, increasing by the day.

Which of the contestants will be voted out of the jail first? Tricky one. Much will depend on the viewing judges. But as they have been the ones to send them to the prison camp in the first place, they probably won't be in a hurry to let them out again. What we need to know, though, is if the Mallorcan Ant and Dec will be inside the camp, observing former Unió Mallorquina politicians (because most of them are former UM politicians) in their now natural habitat.

And this is because the Mallorcan Ant and Dec have been outside the camp. All over it like so many media ants in order to greet the contestants as they voluntarily but involuntarily arrived to start their incarceration. They had waited for the celebrity politicians to appear, such as Miguel Nadal, a haircut already suitably convict short and sporting a yellow holdall, and had then pounced: "Any words before you get banged up, Miguel?" Not as such.

Ant and Dec had to make a quick helicopter dash to another camp in Ibiza, where a one-time industry, energy and business minister was appearing in a spin-off of the main show in Palma. And his is quite a show, because he's got sixteen years. No one in Palma, not even Maria Antonia Munar, has managed to get that long. Yet.

The bush tucker trials to land the celeb politicos with their various stretches have been many, and the trials before the trials have been, as befits a reality show, bizarre or surreal. There was the one that involved digging up almost a quarter of a million euros that had been stashed inside a Cola Cao container (and one other) in the back garden of one Antonia Ordinas (she's going to be next resident of the camp, due to arrive on Monday). While Antonia held her mutt, members of plod took their spades to the lawn, and so the "caso Scala", just one of many "casos" that have led to trials and finally to the pen, was named. Why Scala? Antonia's partner is an opera singer, a female one. At least the press has generally avoided using the L-word.

The Mallorcan unreal reality show trials and unreal media events of politicians arriving at the jail under their own steam could have done with the Ant and Dec presenters having an expert summariser in the studio, an über-celebrity politician used to brushes with a judge to talk us all through the background to the current show. Who better than ex-president of the Balearics, Jaume Matas? "How is it, Jaume, that all these other politicians have ended up in the nick and you haven't?" "Ah well, that's because my sentence was reduced to nine months." "Ok, but why was it reduced to nine months, while others' sentences haven't been?"

The answer to that question is that the judges can't put all the politicians inside. There wouldn't be room for a kick off. Plus, once they've interviewed them outside the prison gates as they step out of their own cars, which are then driven away by weeping relatives or lawyers, what would there be left for the Ants and Decs to do? They can't really start filming them inside. Or can they? Because if they could, what a reality show that would be with the dominatrix, matriarch Munar and her snivelling underlings forming their own one-time political party section of Palma's penitentiary. But it would be the rule of the jungle rather than the rule of compliant corruption demanded of these wretched and weak subordinates. The worm would turn, and a worm-eating bush tucker trial would be particularly unpleasant.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.