LEARNING THE HARD WAY (HIGH: CONFESSIONS OF AN IBIZA DRUGS MULE)

When I was a kid, I used to love reading a book for children by the Anglo French writer and satirist Hilaire Belloc.

'Cautionary Tales for Children' was a series of humourous poems for kids about kids with various character traits.

As the title implies, many of the rhymes had grisly stings in the tail (or should that be tale?)

They included rhymes entitled 'Jim who ran away from his nurse and was eaten by a lion,' 'Matilda who told lies and was burned to death' or 'Henry King who chewed bits of string and was early cut off in dreadful agonies'.

As grisly as these poems were, they appealed in much the same way as 'Horrible Histories' appeals to children today.

They were humourously macabre but they also had a very pointed moral.

If Belloc were alive today, it would be interesting to see what he would have made of the story of Michaella McCollum.

If he were to craft a poem about it, it would probably be entitled 'Michaella: who partied too hard in Ibiza and through her own stupidity ended up in jail in Peru'.

BBC3's 'High: Confessions of an Ibiza Drug Mule' aims to be a cautionary tale about a 20 year old from Aughnacloy in Co Tyrone in Northern Ireland who hit the headlines in August 2013.

She was arrested at an airport in Lima along with Melissa Reid from Lenzie in East Dunbartonshire in Scotland for smuggling £1.5 million worth of cocaine.

Known as the "Peru Two", the duo featured in a Channel 4 documentary in 2015 called 'Brits Behind Bars: Cocaine Smugglers'.

Stuart Bernard's BBC3 documentary revisits the story as if it were a slick Guy Ritchie or Danny Boyle movie.

When she is not being interviewed, McCollum narrates the five episode miniseries as if she is a Co Tyrone version of Renton in 'Trainspotting' or Alan in 'Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels'.

The voice of Melissa Reid, however, is absent which is a huge gaping hole.

According to McCollum's account, she was a small town, working class girl from Co Tyrone who went to Ibiza in search of fun and got a little too intoxicated by her lifestyle - partying with a Scottish girl called Parry, taking drugs, drinking, going to raves into the wee small hours and meeting boys.

She landed a job as a hostess in a bar to maintain her hard partying lifestyle where she discovered her job wasn't just to serve customers drinks but also drugs which were supplied from behind the bar.

McCollum says she met a "tall, dark, handsome stranger" called Davey who she quickly fell for but who soon sucked her into the murky world of smuggling drugs.

Enticed by the prospect of earning £5,000, she found herself in the presence of pistol packing criminals and then on a long distance flight to Lima with Reid, who she had never met before.

Boarding the plane, Michaela thought her destination was in Europe, only to realise she was on a long haul heading to South America.

On their arrival in Peru, the girls had to pretend to be tourists for a couple of days, traveling around remote parts of the country before a rendezvous in Lima where they received 11 kilos of cocaine in bags of porridge which they were ordered to stash on the left side of their suitcases.

With little sleep and a huge sense of dread, McCollum recounts in the second episode how she nervously made her way to check-in and watched the suitcase disappear on the luggage hold while the sniffer dogs didn't bark, only to be tapped on the shoulder by her arresting officer.

All of this occurs as newspapers back home in Northern Ireland pick up via social media on a story about the aspiring model's disappearance in Ibiza and her family in Aughnacloy become increasingly distressed about her uncharacteristic lack of contact for 10 days.

Subsequent episodes in the miniseries cover her arrest, trial, incarceration and the media brouhaha surrounding it in Peru, Northern Ireland, the Irish Republic and Scotland.

Featuring interviews with journalists who covered the case Patricia Devlin, Christopher Bucktin and Barbara McCarthy as well as Juan Mendoza, the Chief Prosecutor of Narcos in Peru, her cellmate Migeulina and the girls' translator Andrea, 'High: Confessions of an Ibiza Drug Mule' is an attempt to enable McCollum to seize control of a media narrative which shifted from initial sympathy to derision.

The McCollums' former parish priest Monsignor Colum Curry helps cast the story as a tale of redemption, with Michaela paying the price for her foolishness but growing up and wishing to use her story as a warning to those who might be tempted to smuggle drugs. 

At its best, Bernard's documentary shines a light on the grim mechanics of the drugs trade, the callousness of the narco gangs and the highs and lows of the Peruvian prison system.

However the glossy way the documentary series approaches its story and the script McCollum delivers on the voiceover does her no favours whatsoever.

Observations in the first episode like "That's me - owner of the world's most infamous up-do" and the glib characterisation of her hometown Aughnacloy in the 1990s as "shooting and sheep - pure shite, right?" are cloying and will no doubt not endear her to her neighbours.

The sweary script often comes across condescending and shallow, like a teacher desperately trying to impress the cool kids in class.

This attempt to look cool is reinforced by the inclusion of popular tracks by Orbital, the Prodigy, Supergrass and Fontaines DC.

'Trainspotting' style dramatised recreations of Michaela's experience in which the actress playing her, Alexandra Constantinidi, hoovers up cocaine at glossy parties in Ibiza or 'Maria, Full of Grace' images of her looking tormented in a Peruvian prison cell also jar.

And no matter how much McCollum and Monsignor Curry protest that her main aim is to right some of her wrongs, the way Bernard approaches the story undermines that effort.

Those who have been critical of her in the past will not be swayed.

Like Ian Bailey in both Sky Atlantic's and Netflix's Sophie Toscan du Plantier murder documentaries, her deteractors will dismiss this factual miniseries a cynical attempt by her to bask in the renewed spotlight and milk another 15 minutes of fame.

This may be unfair to McCollum but it is the perception that the programme makers spectacularly fail to combat.

To Michaella McCollum's credit, she never tries to soft soap what she did - especially the stupidity and her mendacity.

However her refusal to balk at a script which has her say "If you think taking coke is a rush, try walking a million quid's worth of the stuff into an international airport" shows a lack of editorial filter or self awareness.

With its rapid fire editing, slick drone shots and pacy interviews, 'High: Confessions of An Ibiza Drugs Mule' is undoubtedly highly watchable but it also feels a bit tacky and disposable.

Unlike Belloc, this cautionary tale revels too much in the degradation and its warning gets blunted by the programme makers' addiction to gloss and a desperate need for street cred.

In fact, you can't help but feel that the best thing McCollum can now do is forge a life away from the spotlight. 

('High: Confessions of a Drugs Mule' was broadcast on BBC1 from July 5-15, 2021 and was made available on the BBC iPlayer)

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