WHAT a difference half a year makes.

Back in August at Rio 2016, Sir Bradley Wiggins capped a glittering cycling career by winning a record-breaking eighth Olympic medal, making him the most decorated Briton of all time.

One retirement and a banned steroid “therapeutic exemption use” controversy later and he’s goofing around throwing a snowball at a C4 camera for his introductory VT on The Jump and realising: “I was a successful Olympian and now I’m skiing like a prat.”

That’s not the worst, though.

He’s also being interviewed by Davina McCall and racing at moderate speeds around some gates against comedian Mark Dolan, who’s on the show because of “some kind of clerical error”.

A joke that has a ring of truth to it, what with his TV highlight to date being as host of short-lived TLC panel show If Katie Hopkins Ruled The World.

Although Mark did also, to be fair, beat Shaun Ryder and Corrie’s Helen Flanagan on Celebrity Come Dine With Me with his pea soup, three bird roast and plum duff.

So you can see why they snapped him up for a winter sports competition.

We also have some predictable faces from the reality TV circuit, like Gareth Thomas, Towie’s Lydia Bright, Made In Chelsea’s Spencer Matthews, Caprice and Louis Smith who said: “Without blowing my own horn,” while about to blow his own horn, “I kick butt at things like this.”

But along with Wiggo we have some interesting characters — taekwondo “head-hunter” Jade Jones, England rugby World Cup winner Jason Robinson, Emma Parker Bowles (Camilla’s niece) and Liverpool football “God” Robbie Fowler who looks like a one-man avalanche in the making.

They’ll still struggle to overcome this show’s inherent flaws, however.

The main reason to tune in — the risk of celebs getting seriously injured — lost its allure last year when they got seriously injured.

It happened again already in the first half hour when we joined Vogue Williams in hospital with ruptured knee ligaments and Davina asking: “Are you going to get on skis again?”

Vogue: “One-hundred per cent. If The Jump comes back next year, I’m going to be in it to win it.”

So that’s a no, then.

The series’ biggest issue, though, remains the elimination ski jump itself, TV’s biggest anticlimax.

Terrifying it no doubt is to do, but the effect as a TV spectacle is like watching a drenched teabag plop off a spoon into a food bin.

We didn’t even get THAT much from Big Brother winner Josie Gibson who chickened out on live TV and had Davina desperately scrambling around for the right words: “Josie is not going to jump, which means it is a no jump.”

The brutal truth is we are one Wiggo injury away from a non-event.

This series desperately needs his bucking of reality TV conventions, which had him pulling faces behind Davina’s back and answering her question: “Why did you choose The Jump?”

Bradley: “Just to **** off the Daily Mail.”

Davina: “We’re not allowed to say that word.”

Absolutely. Children might be watching.

“Just to **** off the D**** M***.” Much better.