Cruising With Jane McDonald

See how many of these words and expressions you can get through before you start smirking.  Sausage.  The biggest one.  Such a big organ.  Tugging away.  Now, if, like me, you’re already laughing out loud, then this means you are a fan of innuendo.  This blog has long proven a safe space for those that identify as loving silliness (see post on Miranda), but the time feels right to welcome on board each and every fan of innuendo out there because, this week, we’re going on us holidays.  We’re going Cruising With Jane McDonald.  If you didn’t enjoy any of the double-entendres, then get out.

Ever since Adele Roberts’ luxury item on I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here was a framed photo of Jane herself, I’ve been meaning to return to this show.  I remember one Christmas visit to the parents some years back.  We differ on lots of things, from politics to food, but TV viewing behaviour is perhaps home to the biggest generational divide.  I therefore spent the festive period, as a guest, tolerating such nonsense as Countryfile, the BBC news, Antiques Roadshow and countless advert breaks filled with spots whose frequency was approaching a billion.  I wasn’t entertained but I mostly wasn’t listening.  Then, one evening, after a slice of Christmas cake and a peppermint tea, something came on about cruise holidays.  There was our Jane, she off of a 1998 BBC reality documentary called The Cruise (back when everyone in this sort of show was guaranteed a showbiz career), still going strong, still going on cruises, 20 years later.  Apart from a stint on Loose Women (Jane, not me), I hadn’t seen much of her outside of some Victoria Wood sketches (insert plug for dinnerladies).  Yet, this one programme was the highlight of my winter break.  My parents and I chuckled throughout, enjoying the entertainment, unified in Jane’s silly innuendos.  Channel 5 had previously only served one purpose in my life: hosting later series of Big Brother.  Now it was giving me something more.

But why now?  Well, as someone who’s lucky in lockdown (a job, a place to live, online shopping), one minor pain point has been the lack of going on holiday.  I expect no sympathy as the world has bigger problems just now, but don’t worry anyway as I have solved this myself through the format of travelogue television.  I can’t go abroad, but Jane can.  So when I’ve reached the end of my WFH day, I move from the home office to the sofa (same room), treat myself to a tonic water (as a pretend gin and tonic, to avoid the start of a slippery slope whose first step is drinking alone) with ice and lemon, and crack open an episode.

We always start with Jane enthusing about her love of cruising.  Her Yorkshire accent leads to a certain pronunciation of the R in cruise that I wish I had remembered enough of the linguistics in my degree to be able to transcribe phonetically here.  Imagine cruise, but said in a more fun way.  And that’s the joy of Jane – she’s happy to be there.  Whether she’s getting taken up the Danube, hitting the Caribbean islands or bobbing about the Inner Hebrides, Jane always bursts with excitement before she gets on any ship.  Her passion for cruising is palpable.  Sometimes, she has some hours to kill in her first port, but before long we’re following her deep into the bowels of the vessel as she tries (with mixed success) to locate her cabin.  With cruise companies wising up to the PR her trips give them, later series see her occupy the swishest accommodation, but Jane is mostly genuinely glad to have a bed and a clean toilet.  She’ll test the shower’s acoustics and always pull out a clothing line so she can make comments about people’s smalls.  And that’s what you really need when considering what cabin to book.

We’re then served a jazzy infographic, using a glitzy cutty-outty head of Jane to document her itinerary (always starting in Wakefield).  My favourite of these is for her Iceland trip, as she simply gives up pronouncing the place names properly after several false starts.  Then, for the best part of an hour, to quote Jane, we’re on us holidays!  At each port, she packs in all sorts, whether spurning the average tourists for a personal guided tour of something or other, or joining in with elderly British couples in anoraks who first got the cruising bug in 1972 and now won’t go anywhere unless it’s on a waterborne hotel with nine bars and six à la carte restaurants.  Jane is up for anything, and that’s one of the best parts.  She jumps off a building in New Zealand, takes a zipwire down Niagara Falls and asks any man below the age of 50 if he is married.  Her heart is on her sleeve, easily moved to tears by Budapest’s Holocaust memorial, Gracie Fields’ tomb on Capri or the sight of the Taj Mahal.  The only thing she doesn’t like is walking up steep hills, but she can normally balance out that inconvenience with some sort of cheeky drink, a whopping innuendo and a quick whizz round any gift shop.  Other highlights include interactions with her hair and make-up pal, Sue, and the bit where she explores the ship on her own, wielding a camera on a stick while she bothers holidaymakers who desperately try to act like they haven’t just overdone it at the buffet.

Now we must touch on how each show ends.  Middle series include a cheeky “What?” moment where we catch Jane up to no good – I can confirm I laughed out loud at each of these.  But, throughout, the singer in Jane comes into play and we are treated to a musical number.  I would love to have been in the production meeting where this part of the format was decided upon.  Song choices are linked to the location, with Jai Ho and Ray Of Light accompanying her up the Ganges, and the Evita soundtrack saved for Argentina, for example.  I delight in Jane because she never takes herself seriously, but for the musical number moments, her performance is more studied.  But what better end to the high camp of the high seas than a baffling bit of a singsong?

So, join me in agreeing with Bafta that this is an excellent show.  For now, Jane may have hung up her cruising smalls and the show is over (just like our EU membership, for now), but if you’re looking for a bit of comfort, whimsy and vacation-simulating entertainment in lockdown, all without the actual hell of being trapped on a ship with other British people, then this is the perfect bit of television, at least until we can go on us holidays again.