–
Brutal bad luck for the makers of ‘De Mol’. First Miss Nele dropped out after a muscle tear, then Philippe, the mole himself, stopped because of the too great mental and physical pressure and now detective Anke also had to give up after an elbow fracture. “We are experiencing a really unlucky season this year. We immediately got everything on our plate,” said presenter Gilles De Coster
–
“I had to get a dramatic exit, didn’t I”, Anke laughed from the hospital. “Not just through a red screen.” It was a dramatic exit. The venom was in the tail end of yesterday’s episode. When Anke jumped off a sixty meter high cliff in exchange for pass questions, she injured her elbow. “There’s something wrong with my elbow,” she cried desperately from the rope. Two hours later the verdict came: an elbow fracture. Later it turned out to be three or four fractures.
––
Concern
“Our first concern that day was of course Anke,” said Gilles. “When it turned out that she could go home safely and accompanied, we resumed the game and the recordings. Yet we can only say that we are experiencing a real bad luck season this year. You go out with ten people who let you carry out fun and challenging assignments, both physically and psychologically. You try to carry out that guidance and construction of that journey as carefully as possible. This has been successful in recent years and we have been spared any setbacks, but this year we immediately had everything on our plate. An accident never comes alone, they sometimes say, and nothing turns out to be less true.”
––
Even now Anke still struggles with the elbow. “I was taken by ambulance to the hospital in Gran Canaria. It was clear that it would be a major operation, so I was repatriated and we went straight to the emergency room in Belgium. They operated on me, with the result: many pins and plates in it. There was little progress so they operated on me again and took out all the screws. Then I got swelling and two weeks later I had another operation. It’s still not going well.”
Gilles admires Anke as well. “Anke was a very strong candidate. She was determined and amazed us from day one with her competitive approach and her love for the game and the group. That she had to leave the game in this very unfortunate way feels extra wry. In the first place for her, certainly also for the group, but also for us as makers. We have a lot of admiration for her positivism and her drive in her not-so-evident rehabilitation process.” And what if Anke De Mol had been? “Then it was without a doubt game over. Then we would have turned off the cameras and ended the recordings.”
How could detective Anke keep her participation in the outside world a secret? “My alibi was that I was in Singapore for Interpol. A human trafficking file. Why else would I leave the kids behind for three weeks? And why am I not sending pictures? I said I really shouldn’t say anything about it. That they were very strict at Interpol.”
Everyone a tattoo
Another very special moment in the episode was the group’s night out. They passed a tattoo parlor and they all decided to get a tattoo. A small banana, really. They should have been running through the banana plantations that day looking for assignments, trying to shoot bananas into a basket with a big slingshot, and solving all kinds of questions about bananas, so they just decided. So the next morning all five of them woke up with tattoos on their bodies. “It says something about how hard you are drawn to each other,” says Yens. “And how crazy we are in our heads”, laughed Manu.
––
Three more candidates in the game. And the mole, of course. The Mole who hadn’t done so badly. EUR 4,400 of the EUR 17,000 was collected in this episode. There is now a total of 24,790 euros in the group pot.
—
