We want the jungle silverback – so hurry up, Matt!
I’M A CELEBRITY... GET ME OUT OF HERE!
ITV, last night
ANOTHER year, another three weeks glued to our screens and another bunch of celebrities who’ll do anything for fame and fortune. Oh, okay, not quite anything. But they are generally happy to chomp through kangaroo penises, be buried alive with snakes and forage frantically through cockroaches for the chance of a decent meal.
This year, lurking behind the foliage in the Australian jungle, it’s the usual batch of well-known and less wellknown TV presenters, comedians, reality stars, soap actors and retired sports stars.
And Boy George, for goodness sake. Who always swore he’d never go on, but suddenly says he’s ‘bored of sitting in the corner being iconic’. And, perhaps more pertinently, is being paid a record-breaking £500,000 for the privilege – and looks like a genie who’s popped out of a lamp with very, very white teeth.
Some make strong starts – Charlene White from Loose Women and former lioness Jill Scott MBE triumph against vertigo and fear. Coronation Street’s Sue Cleaver has a good old grope through vats of fish eyes and entrails. Hollyoak’s Owen Warner gets showered in cockroaches.
But comedian Babatunde Aleshe, from Celebrity Gogglebox, fails dismally on the very first task due to his crippling fear of heights.
(In fact, collectively, this lot seem to be afraid of everything from spiders, to heights, to the outdoors, to camping, to being apart from their parents, to managing without a biweekly haircut.)
Of course, no one is (officially) in it for the money.
SLIMMED down former Radio One DJ Chris Moyles wants people to see he’s ‘not an a***hole’. Handsome Owen wants people to hear his words, not those of his Hollyoaks character, Romeo. Love Island’s Olivia Attwood wants to show she’s actually gung-ho and not high maintenance behind the lips and boobs.
For Matt Hancock – yet to arrive – it’s all about ‘going to where the people are’ and continuing his dogged fight to have all children screened for dyslexia. Good old Matt. What a star!
(In fact, such is his commitment to the cause that, just weeks ago, when he should have been at Tory Party conference, the MP for West Suffolk was sweating it out with Melinda Messenger and Danielle Lloyd in Thailand for Channel 4’s Celebrity SAS. And £40,000). But anyway, hats off to the lot of them – all buoyed up and excited before they get sick to death of rice and beans, or gag on something unmentionable in the bushtucker trials.
Ant, 46, and Dec, 47, meanwhile, are as if frozen in time. A bit chubbier, a bit richer, a bit more settled in their personal lives.
And clearly thrilled to be back – for the 20th time – where they love it most, in the Australian jungle, taking the mickey out of hungry celebs who are not at their best – and ignoring Peta’s campaign to have them sacked for cruelty to the poor snakes, cockroaches and lizards who could end up down the former health secretary’s jungle trousers.
Speaking of whom... where on earth is he? Maybe he’s still counting his massive £400,000 appearance fee. Or giving his partner Gina Coladangelo’s bottom one last, loving farewell squeeze. Or, who knows, perhaps dealing with a teeny bit of urgent constituency work.
Wherever you are Matt, please hurry up! Because, yes, it’s great watching and Olivia and Chris skydive, and Owen display his extraordinary chest, and Mike Tindall MBE says he’ll eat anything for the protein, and the VIPs – Very Isolated People – embrace their new status on a deserted island.
But all we really want is for the great jungle silverback to come crashing into town.
Perhaps he’ll swing in on a liana, stripped to the waist and beating his pale, hairy chest. Or maybe he and fellow love cheat Seann Walsh will kayak in together, bonding over what it feels like to be caught on camera doing the dirty on their long- suffering partners in front of millions.
Whatever. Right now we just want him here so we can make sure he does every disgusting bushtucker trial going.