Reality TV gets tired and emotional

Just to show that we try to do follow-up on seemingly long-forgotten posts, we'd like to bring you all the latest news on the farcical Irish TV reality show Cabin Fever, in which the contestants were living and working together on a boat. In an unplanned plot twist, the boat sank and it was lucky that no-one drowned. The official report on the sinking is out today, and the overall impression is that the ship captain from the Simpsons would have done a better job than the ship's actual captain, who at least had the wit to "lose" the ship's Global Positioning System unit before investigators could get their hands on it.

But by that point, it sounds like he probably had sobered up, and realised what a shambles he was in. Overall, the report is a masterpiece of euphemisms, but what it amounts to is -- no-one on board had a f**king clue what they were doing, which they compounded by all getting plastered:

The report of the investigation into the sinking of the reality television programme vessel 'Cabin Fever' at Tory Island [Donegal] in 2003 says the vessel had no effective watchkeeping and that the contestants were fatigued.

The investigation report cites lack of effective watchkeeping, breaches of the vessel's passenger operating licence and interference caused by filming requirements on the number of experienced crew on board.

It says the vessel should not have left Rathlin for Tory in bad weather because it was only allowed operate in favourable conditions, and the investigators say there was no clear command structure aboard.

The Marine Casualty Investigation Board says that fatigue had developed amongst crew and contestants, exacerbated by a late night out on Tory before sailing.

Coco Television [producers] has disputed the comments about the late night out. Coco says they had a substantial meal, with two glasses of wine per person.

Since everyone expects lawsuits, we wonder if Coco's statement needs to be carefully parsed. Was everyone drinking? If not, the two-glass average means that some people had more than two glasses? And how big were the glasses? Aarrr!