Jeremy Kyle For IB3

It is of course one of the priorities identified in the manual for conducting a coup d'état. "Item 3: Storm the state broadcaster and take over the network. Item 3.1: Announce who you are - The United Freedom People's Liberation Army of (add as applicable). Item 3.2: Incite counter-rebellion by subjecting the proletariat to several days of unrelentingly tedious classical music combined with images of peasants tolling in fields under a baking sun working for the greater glory of the fatherland." Alternatively, if you have lesser ambitions, i.e. coups are not on your agenda but control of the broadcaster is, you simply insist on running it, thus making your governmental partners suspicious and incurring the opprobrium of a discredited opposition.

The Balearic Partido Popular does have some almighty great brass neck at times. Reduced to a parliamentary rabble by all the off-field shenanigans involving finding a temporary leader for the party, it has been left to Marga Prohens to womanfully fly the local PP flag with its seagull with newly clipped wings. Marga hasn't done a wholly bad job - getting the nepotism dig in about the health service, for example - but when it comes to the IB3 broadcaster she has been staggering with all the lack of credibility of a double amputee. She can stand on neither leg as both were long ago cut from under her, all the consequence of how the PP manipulated the broadcaster for its own ends: how it effectively airbrushed the likes of GOB or the Obra Cultural Balear out of Mallorcan political society; how it managed to turn the use of the definite article "the" into a rallying cry for Catalanists both moderate and hardline as well as normally otherwise indifferent; how it arranged for airtime to minimise pre-election exposure of Podemos (and others).

This latter factor does perhaps play a part in Podemos's ambitions for the broadcaster. Not a coup, just control of it. This, at any rate, is how Marga sees things. "The sole objective of Podemos is the control of public communication media," she declared last week. If this is indeed Podemos's heart's desire, then you can hardly say it will be the first time that a local political party has stamped its authority all over IB3. The PP did so with almost totalitarian effectiveness, installing first the vice-president, Antonio "Nipper" Gómez, as its director (albeit in a transitionary capacity when the previous director resigned), then he would have been mayor of Calvia but isn't, José Manuel Ruiz.

As Podemos's Dave Spart, leader Alberto Jarabo, used to have a day job making films, the IB3 takeover may well be all part of a wider plan to reveal Alberto's oeuvre. What might this include? Dull but worthy documentaries charting the struggles of the Bolivian working-class of the nineteenth century? A profile of jolly Nicolás Maduro, the president of Venezuela? Who can say. But Podemos intentions - their proposed director for IB3 - come in the guise of their man in Manacor who is currently combining council duties for citizen service with looking after the town's cemeteries. Carles Grimalt is his name, and Carles, replete with not one but two earrings, and photographed wearing a fetching, flowery shirt, has all the looks of a member of the Bee Gees backing group circa the later "Night Fever" era. Indeed, were he to sport a beard, he would be Barry Gibb.

Not that earrings should bar someone from running a telly and radio station. But if Podemos are serious in wanting someone with suitable credentials, why not broaden the search? There must be all manner of potential candidates knocking around. Keith Chegwin perhaps. Or what about Jeremy Kyle? That'll be it. That's what he's been doing here in Mallorca. There had to have been some good reason. Jeremy's not bad on the old participation thing, getting idiots to make even bigger idiots of themselves and so on. Ideal for the new Podemos participatory era therefore. Kyle it is then.

* Podemos have since discovered that the law doesn't permit the appointment of a member of a political party's executive, so Grimalt cannot be IB3's director.
** And now they have discovered the law does permit it. Or something like that.