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Enduring enemas, drinking your own urine: you'd think the first season of local show Shock Treatment was enough of, well, a shock to the system. You may remember the TV2 reality show's first season in 2006, when 12 well-known Kiwis believed they were off to a mystery destination to host a new travel series but discovered they were actually in for an extreme mind-and-body detox.
So presumably season-two recruits know the drill, right? Wrong. In a new shock-factor twist, 12 "pampered personalities" are flown to a foreign destination to join the ranks of the world's toughest professions. Survive for seven days and your chosen charity gets $5000; succumb to the temptation of an open-ended air ticket and you return home empty-handed.
Later in the six-episode series we'll see victims of their celebrity status, such as Annette Presley and Noelle McCarthy, milking yaks in Mongolia and hunting giant anacondas in the Amazon jungle. But tonight, radio DJ/former NZ Idol judge Iain Stables and dancer/choreographer/Dancing With The Stars co-host Candy Lane are dispatched to a defence-department boot camp in Jamaica.
Stables thinks he's off to a health retreat, but Lane's prepped herself for a more taxing twist. She doesn't know where she's going or with whom until she's handed her ticket and tapped on the shoulder at Auckland Airport.
Having heard from a friend that her travel buddy might be Paul Holmes, Lane was astonished and delighted to swivel round and almost fall over on a rather more colourful DJ, whose radio show she'd heard on the way to the airport. After once sharing a long cab ride, the pair were already acquainted. Laughs Lane: "We hit it off because we both have a warped sense of humour!"
Shock jock Stables - who's never been far from controversy in his colourful career, suffers bipolar disorder and was sacked from ZM's drive show in February - quickly cottoned on that something was amiss on arrival in Jamaica: "I've probably done over a lot of people over the years and I have a feeling Captain Karma is about to come and bite me on the buttocks!" When their car pulls up beside a Jamaica Defence Force Training Base, their expressions are priceless. Says Lane: "Stables' face dropped, and my heart sank to the depths."
The duo face an intense, military-style programme, training with five recruits as coastguard border police who'll apprehend drug smugglers "on fast boats with big guns" (the Jamaican defence force is basically the army, police and navy rolled into one). Facing fears which they admitted in a questionnaire, heights-phobic Lane has to leap out of a helicopter into the sea and exercise-free-zone Stables must flex those flabby muscles.
He isn't a happy chap. "I haven't done a press-up since I was back in fifth form. I'm not huge on physical stuff, and I have a real major problem with discipline and being told what to do. I got booted out of Sea Cadets!"
While their tormentor Lieutenant Nigel Gordon doesn't look like a man you'd want to be lippy to, Stables establishes himself as the naughty kid of the class. We'll let the expletive-laced tantrum about getting a haircut speak for itself.
But it's obvious during Day Two's unremitting run that Stables is struggling. "For 10 years I haven't trained, I've sat around and been on the air," he says. "I'm not fit enough, man. I'm quitting."
Waiting to leave, he looks dejected. "I feel like I've let Candy down. I feel like I've let me down. I've never really failed. It's upsetting. That's me letting my guard down which I rarely do. Am I walking away shameful and upset? Yeah, I am." But he's not sorry he came, because he's learned he needs to be more fit, open-minded and non-reactive.
Lane doesn't feel any resentment. "I felt devastated for him because I know how upset he was. Even now he says, I just wish I could've unquit', but the bottom line is he was stuck [fitness-wise] with something he couldn't handle. But when Stables left, I thought oh my God, it's just me'." Well not exactly: she was sleeping in the same basic dorm with five tough-looking Jamaican trainees.
While she felt uneasy at first, "her boys" came to feel like family. "They'd even guard me while I had my cold shower: there were no curtains so one would stand there with his back to me." And they cheered her on during training.
Lane's lung disorder, sarcoidosis - which can affect breathing, especially in high altitude - kicked in during a run up hundreds of stairs. While the disciplined dancer was already pretty fit, the arduous training - especially the obstacle course - pushed her to her limits.
But her biggest hurdle was definitely plunging from a helicopter into the ocean. "When heights are involved I just lose it," says Lane, whose face drains of colour as she sits in the ascending helicopter, chanting "No fear". But she doesn't hesitate before the jump, and climbs out clearly elated, saying "Take me to the cocktail bar!" with a grin.
The down-to-earth damsel smiles a lot on the show. "I didn't realise how good the whole thing was making me feel. It's given me back my drive, and boosted my confidence." Stepping aside from her hectic family-and-work juggling act to concentrate on herself was a hugely freeing experience. "It gave me back the spontaneity my life used to have: that exciting feeling of whatever will be will be and let's just do it."
During the final day's on-sea exercises, out-of-the-blue the training boat pulls out to apprehend some incoming South American drug smugglers. Though Lane admits she felt as shell-shocked as she looked, she follows orders to jump on to the offending vessel and point a gun at a smuggler's head.
Surpassing the entire base's expectations, "that blonde girl" - who's learned from the experience just how strong her mind can be - says she never entertained giving up. "That's always been part of me: I never let anyone down and I never quit."
Though torrential tears testify to the toll training took. "It was more the turmoil going on inside me than sooky tears," laughs Lane. "Before I went Jason Gunn said, It's all right Candy, whatever you do just don't cry'. When I came back I said, Um, you know that crying thing? I don't think there was a scene I didn't cry in'!"
While she's nervous about seeing the show for the first time, she's going to tune in with a couple of girlfriends. "They'll lie to me and say Oh you look lovely without your makeup'."
In fact Lane, who suits the casual, bare-faced look a lot more than TV glam, didn't even take any makeup with her. On the way back, the TV crew confessed her lack of girly gear had ruined a planned scene to confiscate her makeup, her hairdryer, and jewellery. "I said, that's not who I am'. You know, when Mum was encouraging me to go on the show she said, Candy it would be really good if people could see who you actually are.' Hopefully they do."
- Shock Treatment debuts on TV2 tonight at 7.30pm.
