Friday 17th November 2006

I’m experimenting with having a few evenings in to give my body a bit of a break. I am old now and it needs the occasional bit of time off. On that note, if any of you can recommend a good week long detox diet (which if it could loose me any weight at the same time would be doubly appreciated) then do send one in. Or send me a note saying ‘look on the internet – there are hundreds, literally hundreds’. That would be useful too.

And so I’ve been getting reacquainted with television, which ordinarily I never watch. I’ve been following the pointless progress of the contestants on I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here on ITV most of the last week. I’ve always dismissed this without having properly watched it as the most ITV (the most commercial and mainstream of our main channels) programme in the world but it’s actually incredibly watchable. It’s funny – mainly because of it’s excellent presents Ant and Dec – but it’s also genuinely entertaining and well put together.

This format might well have been sold now to every country in the world (perhaps the Australian jungle is awash with TV crews and minor celebrities from every nation in neighbouring camps?) but for those of you not familiar with it, here’s a brief description. A group of twelve (?) celebrities are transported to the Australian jungle for a few weeks where they must live together under constant surveillance by an alarmingly large proportion of the British public. It’s got very high figures. The public then vote daily for one of the Celebs to do a trial which will normally involve having to eat live grubs or scramble around with rats. As they do these trials they have to collect star shaped tokens, and how many they manage to collect dictates how many meals are delivered to the camp that night. If they only manage one, then one meal will have to be shared between everyone and tempers will flair as stomachs groan.

So obviously the public vote for the person least likely to do the task well, therefore ensuring that the minor celebrities starve. There is not a single person phoning in their vote that wants them to do well and provide adequate food for the camp, of that I am absolutely sure. We want to see them suffer, argue, and fight.

So why would a celebrity want to starve themselves in a jungle, be surrounded by rats, and be humiliated every day? Well a celebrity wouldn’t, but the people they get on this show have careers that have severely waned and I think most just need the money. It’s genuinely sad on the one hand… but we get over that. The other reason for people doing it is that it gets them an enormous amount of press back in the UK (the tabloid papers follow it feverishly) and their fees (which range from about £30,000 to £100,000 depending, rather unfairly, on how high their profile is) can be more than trebled by magazine articles and endorsements when they come out. I believe last years winner was ex-girl band member Kerry Katona and she’s raked in a fortune from of it. There were rumours at the time that she’d earn over a million quid and I’m sure she has. Although ironically the fickle public now hate her, when only a year ago she was crowned an impromptu national treasure.

The third reason is that it can change your public image and make people see you in a completely different light. One of this year’s contestants is David Gest, the ex husband of Liza Minnelli and generally thought to be one of the scariest and least human people on the planet. I was like everyone else a week ago, I saw him as a disturbing alien. But so far he’s been the star of the show, been very human and entertaining, not really strange at all, and even remarkably likable. It was a master stroke for him agreeing to take part, even if it is (according to claims) that he needs the cash because the Minnelli split left him pot less.

He was the 40/1 rank outsider to win before the show started. Contestants get voted out of the jungle week by week, by the way. Now he’s the joint favourite. And all he’s done is cheerfully agree to clean out the toilets and not be the complete basket case that everyone assumed he was. His agent must be bouncing. So long as he keeps this up, he’ll be one of the biggest stars in the UK once he comes out. It’s remarkable.

But then the opposite can happen. One contestant (I keep saying ‘contestant’ but what else do you call them?) is an ex BBC newsreader called Jan Leeming. She has performed so outstandingly badly, with so little grace, and with so much moaning, that she will have to emigrate when she leaves the show. Actually I think she already has, I believe she lives in South Africa, and this might be the reason she’s so overcome and unable to cope with events – she clearly hasn’t seen the show before. Not only are the British press merciless, the British public are too, and at the very best she is now a laughing stock. At worst, she is seen with abject disgust by every household in the UK. The loathsome idiot! Ha-Ha! I am joining in too! I hate her!

Burn her!

Naturally the public are now voting for her to do all the nasty tasks just to see her suffer and moan further. The public are a cruel mistress and we will not rest until she is a broken woman. We are like that.

It’s all pretty basic entertainment but sociologically it’s a valid and interesting experiment. Not so much for the contestants in the jungle and how they react to situations, but on how the viewing public react to them as individuals. Another ex girl band singer, Myleene Klass, was the favourite to win initially, and is still performing well with the bookmakers, but she’s an attractive girl with a good body and has been taking rather a lot of waterfall showers in a bikini recently. The canny public, now used to lots of reality TV formats involving celebrities, will catch onto this and realise she is going for the sexy vote. This will be used against her. She is also enjoying herself too much. She needs to be seen as more vulnerable, have a bit of a breakdown, and then pull herself together to see it through. That’s what Kerry Katona pretended to do and she walked away with it.

If Myleene is clever I think we can expect a major breakdown, in a likable way, within the next two weeks. She’ll have to time it right.

Jason Donovan is a big favourite to win but I’m not too sure… again, he’s too confident and comfortable. You need to get the ‘trouper’ vote, but then crucially you need to be seen to be suffering and overcome that suffering. My money is on David Gest to win, with Dean Gaffney a good outside bet. Gaffney seems together enough, and reasonably likable, but a bit quirky at the same time, as well as being as sort of British anti-hero from his idiot character in EastEnders anyway.

AND THIS IS WHAT HAVING A FEW NIGHTS IN DOES TO YOU! JESUS! I need to start going to the pub again so I have something to write about. Right, I don’t care, here’s my bet (before anyone has left the jungle) on who I think will win this year’s I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here, starting with the most likely in my mind.

1. David Gest
2. Dean Gaffney
3. Faith Brown
4. Myleene Klass
5. Matt Willis
6. Jason Donovan
7. Malandra Burrows
8. (someone yet to be introduced)
9. Toby Anstis
10. Phina Oruche
11. Lauren Booth
12. Scott Henshall
13. Jan Leeming

I am the most boring person in the world.

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