Sky 1 makes a star out of skydiving septuagenarian

Sky 1 has found a new Irish star to follow in the footsteps of Martin Moone, and she is 71-year-old Nancy Ashmawy.

The channel's new factual entertainment show 50 Ways to Kill Your Mammy is fronted by Baz Ashmawy, veteran of RTÉ's Baz's Extreme Worlds and Baz's Culture Clash. But the heart of the show is his relationship with his mother, retired nurse Nancy, in her first media venture.

The opening episode, which airs on Monday, August 25th, sees the “Irish mammy” accompany her son and the production team to Las Vegas and Los Angeles, where she drives a Mustang, experiments in scream therapy, joins a Swat. team on an exercise and tries a Taser gun out for size – all as a prelude to a skydive.

Directed by previous Baz Ashmawy collaborator Barry Egan, the six-part "extreme bucket list" series has been made for Sky by Burning Bright Productions and Brown Bread Films, with post-production by the Dublin-based company Egg.

Sky's director of entertainment channels, Stuart Murphy, has hailed 50 Ways to Kill Your Mammy as a continuation of the tradition of "lovable fools" at Sky that began with Homer Simpson and continued with Louie Spence of Pineapple Dance Studios and Karl Pilkington on An Idiot Abroad.

"For me, Baz is the ultimate iteration of the lovable fool," he told The Irish Times on a trip to Dublin last year. "I think it's going to be our next An Idiot Abroad."