“LaToya Jackson and Jack Osbourne were involved.”

Marina Hyde reveals that no matter how bizarre British reality TV can seem, there are always depths yet to be plumbed:

The highways of Muncie, Indiana, are patrolled by erstwhile ChiPs actor Erik Estrada, who so enjoyed his role in another US reality show last year that he recently stated: “I am a law enforcement officer first now. Before I was an actor playing a cop and now I am a cop who will act once in a while.”

The show in question was Armed & Famous, whose premise was basically to give sublebrities loaded guns and order them to police a real town. Plucked from unscripted programming’s unofficial repertory company, the cops included Estrada, reality Zelig Jack Osbourne, LaToya Jackson, and a dwarf. There’s always a dwarf.

As for how the show went … Estrada unleashed an obscenity-laden tantrum at an ambulance patient who accidentally referred to him as Emilio Estevez. But the standout triumph – and possibly the reason Armed & Famous was pulled off air after three episodes – featured our rookies storming the house of a woman who was watching TV alone in her nightgown. It transpired in the resultant lawsuit that the celeb-cops had the wrong house but they declined to accept that at the time, choosing instead to handcuff the woman and subject her to a lengthy interrogation. According to court papers, she was left so shaken that she could only explain her ordeal to actual cops with the words. “LaToya Jackson and Jack Osbourne were involved.”