KEZIA Dugdale never persuaded me to vote Labour, but she did compel me do something else I haven’t done in years and never thought I’d do again: watch I’m A Celebrity …Get Me Out Of Here (STV, Thursday).

No-one is sure what her motives are for entering the jungle, but it’s been highly enjoyable watching the theories play out on Twitter: is this a tortuous – and lucrative – way to get kicked out of Labour? Does she actually want to join the SNP? I don’t give credence to this theory; if she wanted to join the SNP, I’m sure there are easier ways – like filling in a form and setting up a direct debit. I really don’t think wrestling with beasties is part of the membership criteria. Maybe she wants a bit of fun and easy limelight? She’s done the thankless job of leading Scottish Labour for so long (“long” in Scottish Labour terms) that perhaps she wants to muck about, giggle, and forget about being serious?

But again, surely there are easier ways of doing this? Friends? A good book? A giant tin of Quality Street?

So we come to the final and most plausible theory: she wants the money. Other former party leaders are earning additional incomes in far less savoury ways, and I include Alex Salmond in that. If she chooses to lark about on a reality show then she’s only harming her own reputation and that of the Labour Party, and the latter’s is in shreds already. If her constituents don’t approve then they can refuse to vote for her at the next election, it’s that simple.

Naturally, it’s not very dignified to get into plastic boxes and poke around with crabs, stars and sawdust, and it’s certainly not dignified to emerge with a spider clinging to your bum and to have some gentleman politely dust it off. But I find I can’t rage at her for trashing Holyrood’s reputation, or dragging politics into the grimy celebrity gutter. When other politicians have done far worse, Kezia’s larks in the jungle just seem silly and a tiny bit pitiful. I felt quite sorry for her.

If all politicians were saintly and went on to found libraries and charities, and write insightful books, then Kezia would deserve to be insulted and shamed but, with our political culture as it is, her actions seem like those of a goody-two shoes prefect who decides to finally rebel, so she paints her nails a pearly pink colour. Look at me! But the teachers just shrug and turn away. They’re far too busy dealing with the kids who’re stabbing, kicking, shooting, and burning down the school. Or the really troubling ones in red leotards who’re pretending to be cats.

MY current favourite sitcom has had a really bad week. I love Man Down (C4, Wednesday) and even feel strangely protective of it given that it’s not a household name. It feels unfairly tucked away on Channel 4, and it’s never the talk of the office the morning after its broadcast. So I love it, and I recommend it, and I defend it, but this week’s episode was weak and silly.

The star is the gigantic comedian, Greg Davies, and he plays Dan, a useless, childish, middle-aged man who can never accept responsibility. This series has been about his attempts to prove to the mother of his child that he could indeed be a decent father, and whenever he tries he ends up in terrible jams.

But this week, those mishaps and mistakes turned completely daft. It was as though the script had been rewritten IN CAPITAL LETTERS and with every awkward moment underlined, typed in italics, and smothered with neon pink highlighter. When Dan took his baby, Simon Bridges, for a walk in the park it erupted into nonsense.

Instead of cringing for Dan and his attempts at real life, I just got bored and felt as though I was watching a silly cartoon: at one point Simon Bridges ended up harnessed to the back of a guide dog who goes galloping across the park with the baby slung on his back like a tiny, floppy jockey. Later, a cross-eyed hippie woman with enormous rubber comedy breasts begins to suckle both the baby and the dog.

In previous episodes, you could wince and cringe and feel a bit of sympathy for Dan as he embarrasses himself on dates, loses his job, and gets shoved around by his father (played perfectly in the first series by the late Rik Mayall) but how can we nod in painful sympathy as Dan watches his newborn gallop round the park on a guide dog’s back?

THE new series Blitz: The Bombs That Changed Britain (BBC2, Thursday) proved that there is still an appetite, and a need, for stories from the Second World War. Someone commented on Twitter recently that there are too many novels being published which are set during the war, but that’s only a valid complaint if the novels are poor. The conflict was so immense, destructive and shocking that it’s nowhere near being exhausted, and this new series proves that by bringing us specific stories of four particular bombs which fell on Britain in the Blitz.

It showed that your survival during those long, terrible nights was really just about luck. An Anderson shelter at the bottom of the garden would protect you from scattered debris of a nearby explosion but certainly wouldn’t withstand a nearby hit; very few structures would. Even those who sheltered in the Tube during the London Blitz were never entirely safe from the bombs, as was shown in 1940 when a bomb fell on Balham station, killing almost 70 people.

The particular bomb in this episode fell on Martindale Road in London. Miraculously, it failed to detonate, but the silent bomb was still dangerous so the locals were evacuated to a nearby Rest Centre in a primary school where they were to be loaded onto buses and moved to alternative accommodation. But the buses didn’t arrive, and when the raiders came over the next night, dropping more bombs, the school was hit, and the survivors from Martindale Road were killed. They’d dodged one bomb, only to be hit by another.

I loved this show, as it focused the awesome scale and horror of the war into one street, and one group of people, making it close and personal.