The Casualty Ward
Some evenings ago, there was, apparently, a programme on some obscure channel about Majorca. How dumb can TV get, do you suppose? How dumb can the people who watch this drivel get, do you suppose? I have a nightmare that hell is a constant loop of The Jeremy Kyle Show - tribes of Karen Matthews or those with brains the size of hers, faces to match and sitting in bars wearing ill-washed bras. Actually, I have seen a few like that here, wandering gormlessly along the likes of Alcúdia's Mile. The thing is we don't need Virgin Channel One, or whatever it was, to tell us that there are stupid and ugly people who come on holiday to Majorca. If you missed the programme, and I certainly did, it was called "Sun Sea and A&E". My, what a hoot, must have thought the production company. Let's do a docu on some chavs kicking the crap out of each other, getting rat-arsed and ending up in the casualty departments of some Majorcan hospitals - specifically in Son Dureta and the Muro hospital. The surprise is that they actually got to the A&E department at all. Normally, they skip that bit and go straight to the morgue having taken a quick dive from the hotel balcony. According to the website of the production company, the series - and yes there are seven more like this - ranges "from too much booze to too much sun; from accidents on the dancefloor to kids' catastrophes in the pool". At least there were only accidents on the dancefloor and not murder.
Better news is that the Top Gear laddos are to come for the Classic Car rally in March and do a show. This will probably prove to be a cue for expats desperate to try and ingratiate themselves with the Top Gear trio. I would advise caution. Clarkson's vitriol would doubtless extend to mostly all expats. If I were you, I'd avoid the Top Gear-ists like the plague. Not that I don't like Clarkson; quite the opposite. And anyone who has seen fit to punch Piers Morgan is fine by me. One trusts that the programme will show some suitably pleasant landscapes and be a rather more positive representation of Mallorca than some Chardonnay who has vomited over a nurse in Muro hospital A&E. Oh, and if you think Clarkson might go easy on the local expattery, do be warned: remember he once said that anyone who had moved to Spain had held up a post office. And I daresay he's had time to work on that particular theme and to come up with something of equivalent hostility to Alexei Sayle's one-time character assassination of Leapy Lee and rubbishing of the Costa expat. Here's hoping.
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