The Scottish Mail on Sunday

I’m not a cougar... get me out of here!

(or why I turned down I’m A Celebrity)

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JUST three weeks ago, I was still in two minds. The husband wanted me to. ‘After all,’ he reasoned, having given the matter at least a minute’s deliberati­on, ‘it’s not as if you have a reputation to lose.’ The bank manager wanted me to. The execs at ITV wanted me to. The children shrugged sadly when I ran it past them.

I’d even gone so far as to enquire what the colour scheme of the camp would be this year (khaki shirt, navy vest and red fatigue trousers) and was beginning to believe whatever Micky, the bubbly talent producer, promised me.

She said I’d ‘have an amazing time’ and frankly I would be ‘mad to turn this offer down!’ She said the line-up was ‘fun and intelligen­t’ and totally Farage-free.

I even met Micky for sticky cocktails at a London bar, and allowed her to seduce me further. There would be only

SINCE the Trumpquake, two phrases we’re all using too much: ‘Across the pond’ and ‘right off the bat’. And one that, somehow, we in the despised ‘liberal elite’ are finding ohso-hard to get past our lips: ‘President-elect Trump.’

starvation rations of rice and beans to eat, and water to drink. It would be proper detox – no tea, coffee, salt and pepper – devices. We’d sleep ‘really really well’ in the open air on our camp beds.

Curiously, looking back, I didn’t ask Micky once about the bushtucker trials and tombs of torment where ‘inmates’ are buried alive with 120,000 spiders, rats and cockroache­s, have to walk the plank from skyscraper­s, jump out of helicopter­s, and so on.

I didn’t ask because, 1) I’ve been to boarding school and 2) I’d taken the precaution of consulting previous inmates. I’d interrogat­ed clever Michael Buerk, who’d gauntly survived until Day 19 in 2014, and said he welcomed the trials as they alleviated the dread torpor of the endless empty days.

‘It is the boredom that gets you,’ he explained. ‘Nothing to read, nothing to do when you’re not being tortured, not much in the way of interestin­g conversati­ons… a big, big nothing for weeks on end, just wondering all the time why the cameraman hidden in the papiermach­e cliff 6ft from your camp bed has such a flatulence problem.’ This was confirmed by my colleague, MailOnline’s Katie Hopkins, who made it to Day 12 in 2007.

‘You might imagine there are bathrooms and a sneaky food source. There aren’t,’ she said. ‘There is just the endless noxious waft of McDonald’s from behind the artificial rock concealing the cameramen and crew.’

But both had also said they hadn’t regretted doing I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! (IACGMOOH), a brilliantl­y produced and edited show, with a crew of many hundreds, where you get to hang out with Ant and Dec (who have just cut a £30million deal with the network) and stay in the seven-star Versace hotel in Queensland, Australia, where the seafood on the coast is to die for… how I havered. I said yes, then no, then havered some more.

I was that close to boarding the plane to Brisbane, having worked out what my luxury would be (I was going to copy Susannah ‘Granny Pants’ Constantin­e, who told me that she took a pillow but smuggled in wax earplugs between her toes). But I didn’t. Looking at this series, on ITV nightly, I’m doubly glad now I hearkened to my subconscio­us (I couldn’t sleep until I’d turned the offer down for the third and final time) and not my husband. And not for the reasons you might think.

All the ‘inmates’ seem terrific, even if I’d only heard of three women before: Carol Vorderman, Scarlett Moffatt and Lisa Snowdon (I hadn’t heard of Jordan ‘I’m known as quite the joker’ Banjo, or Ola Jordan, or even Larry Lamb, though I sometimes watch EastEnders with my mum).

The line-up’s fine and the trials… are the trials. At this point in 2016 – turning out to be quite the crazy year – three weeks of being buried with cockroache­s, chewing on kangaroo’s testicles or sleeping with rats could turn out to be among the most normal thing that’s happened so far.

And yes, I could pop on a bikini – though I definitely wouldn’t give Myleene Klass a run for her money – and bask in the pool like Lisa Snowdon did, or ‘showcase my assets’ in a one-piece like Carol Vorderman. And I would enjoy the intimate girly chats over the campfire about blokes and babies.

I could do all that, but this is what, readers, I don’t think I could hack.

IJUST couldn’t live with the idea that everyone would be snorting with laughter as they waited for me to try to cougar one of the hunky male fitties (listen up! Joel, someone off TV series Skins, has already invited Carol to touch his ‘sturdy shaft’!!). The show is precision-tooled to exploit perimenopa­usal insecurity, and greed, and need for attention – and I admit: Micky almost had me on all three counts.

Also, I can see clearly now that had I gone, someone, somewhere, would have been commission­ed to write a big knocking job on me, much as Lynne Franks did last week on Vorders (‘Desperate to halt the ageing process, she’s tried everything to hold back the clock. It seems no cosmetic treatment has been left untouched in Carol’s determined bid to look as youthful and sexy as possible’… etc etc).

And worst of all, it would be written by someone exactly like me. Was I tempted? Yes. Do I regret turning it down? (Long pause, to build the tension.) … No.

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