Priceless situation comedy in the merry month of May

I have long suspected that Jersey was slowly metamorphosing into Craggy Island, the fictional home of Fathers Ted, Dougal and Jack and the motley collection of lunatics that comprised their congregation, but the collection of Mad May events from last week were proof that the transformation is almost complete.

All we need now is a holy relic or two to upgrade and we will all be transported to that bleak and desolate island west of Ireland to live out our days in total oblivion to the real world.

Like Craggy Island, we have our own version of the ‘lovely girl’ contest – the parish-by-parish searches (currently in full swing) to find this year’s Miss Battle of Flowers.

We may not as yet be holding beauty pageants for sheep, but with a fast-growing community of these woolly creatures there’s time yet for a Super Sheep contest.

The Grouville beauty contest was curiously billed as a ‘search’, which led me to wonder if it was being combined with a scavenger hunt whereby the hopefuls were hidden in Grouville Marsh and the one found first was crowned, received the mandatory cheque and bouquet of flowers and entry to the Miss Battle contest.

The events of Mad May began with rumblings of dissent in the masses – well, those who had assembled in Liberation Square to celebrate Liberation Day.

It has always puzzled me how a circular space could be a square, but mine is not to reason why in the current bizarre state of Jersey. No doubt the fictitious Craggy Island has a round square somewhere – unless it is a plaza, place or park – but that is substance for a future column and I am digressing.

From the mutterings and moans that greeted the playing of the Island’s new national dirge – sorry, anthem – ‘Island Home’ on Liberation Day, it was apparent that although Gerard Le Feuvre’s composition topped a popular poll, a year later it is about as inspiring as Father Ted’s and Dougal’s Song for Europe entry, ‘My Lovely Horse’.

As cheesy and toe-curling as is ‘Beautiful Jersey’, according to the baby of the House, Deputy Jeremy Maçon – who has captured the public mood – it beats the dirge hands-down.

No doubt we can expect the Laughter Factory to devote days of earnest debate to deciding which ditty best sums us up. The Animals’ rendition of ‘We Gotta Get Out Of This Place’ springs to mind as an appropriate choice, and I bet Sadie Rennard could belt that out with gusto.

The prospect of debating what the Island’s anthem should be is probably a welcome prospect for the Senators as our beloved politicians turn their attention, yet again, to government reform.

Just when the current shift thought that the prospect of reforming the Island’s tired and very testing political system had been put on the back burner, up comes a new set of proposals.

This time it’s the Senators who face the axe in a proposed scenario that resurrects the previously rejected super-constituencies, leaves the Constables home and dry, considers four-year terms and a single election for the umpteenth time, and suggests replacing the first-past-the-post ballot with preferential transferable votes.

I am trying very hard to get excited about the prospect of going over old ground again and again, but I am having far too much fun watching a jelly set.

The inmates of Charlie Chuckle’s Laughter Factory should take the advice given within my earshot many moons ago by a farmer to a lawyer in a land dispute between neighbours: ‘I don’t boil my cabbage twice.’

That observation, which would not have been out of place in a Father Ted script, lays the crux of the sorry and at times farcical political climate in Jersey – our politicians have the annoying tendency to overcook whatever comes before the House.

THE good ol’ reliable honorary police provided some light relief to Mad May. Apparently, the streets of St Clement are so plagued by crime, in particular felons wielding knives, that the amateur sleuths are being kitted out with stab vests.

What next – water cannons, tear gas and riot shields to quell unrest at the parish fête, or in case fights break out at the WI’s homemade-sponge competition?

In St Martin it was speeding cars that upset the Constable and his merry band of part-time bobbies on the parochial beat. In an effort to make motorists slow down, they made their own signs out of paper and wood to plonk in hedgerows and banks. Ahh, bless!

THE most alarming of last week’s crop of amazing stories was discovering that our seat of government is accessible 24/7 to anyone with a key. Whatever the truth behind the claim that a Member slept off a hangover in the Royal Square building, it is a travesty that this building is not securely locked and set with alarms overnight.

In a moment reminiscent of Father Dougal at his befuddled best, Deputy Montfort Tadier came forward to say he might have been the culprit, as he is in the habit of working all through the night.

However, he insisted, if he was the one woken at dawn by a cleaner, that he was not drunk, although when questioned by Channel Television he could not confirm if he had fallen asleep and was uncertain as to how many glasses of wine and cups of teas he may have consumed.

No doubt there’s a Jersey equivalent of Father Ted’s devoted and demented housekeeper, Mrs Doyle, staying up all night in the building ever ready with a pot of hot tea just in case one her beloved Members is in need of sustenance!

You couldn’t make this all up, and if you did you’d be in the running to win a BAFTA for best comedy series. Never were Father Ted’s words of advice so appropriate for the malaise that is our sorry lot in Mad May: ‘If you’re heading away from the Island, you’re going in the right direction.’

Will the last person to leave switch the lights off (but not in the States Buildings just in case Members want to pop in in the wee hours).