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Why I Love...I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! 2007

Christopher Biggins
  • Posted at 5:21pm
  • 28 November 2007
  • by GrahamWray-RT
  • 5 comments

I'm a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! has got a lot to answer for. For starters, I now haven't been to the pub for 16 nights. And in the absence of your regular correspondent Grace Dent, I thought you would like to know why men like me are tuning in night after night for more bickering, sniping and subtropical subplots.

Firstly, I'm a Celeb… is that rarest of things - an ITV programme packed with tiny pleasures. And I'm not simply talking about Ant and Dec.

The cheeky Geordie funsters have, as always, been baiting of the celebs. And this year the diminutive duo have been getting away with murder. Not least a cheesy script that is knowingly delivered to killer effect. But the show is also brilliantly cast to ensure the optimum balance of laughs, tears, tantrums and winningly worn swimwear.

It is such compulsive viewing that the campers' faces now have a reassuring familiarity about them. Even the horse-worryingly odd ones like Janice (who has the face of Aerosmith's Steve Tyler but the neck of Dot Cotton) and ex boy bland member "J" (who's gradually morphing into a young Hugh Laurie with every passing day).

But amongst the tired weather-beaten faces, the bickering and the rubbish flirting, it's fittingly been left to Christopher Biggins, the king of panto, to successfully play the show for the pantomime it really is. Relentlessly upbeat and as camp as a Tents-R-Us hypermarket, his "dirty talk" charades routine was the funniest and most brilliantly timed sketch I've seen on telly this year. And singularly deserves to see him crowned king of the jungle.

For us chaps of course, there's been plenty to feast the eye on, from the surprisingly alluring Anna Ryder Richardson - who left it far too late to play the yummy mummy card, foolishly only showering in a bikini on the 14th day - to the peculiar charms of Cerys Matthews.

Cerys is certainly an odd one. Thanks to one side of her top lip going AWOL, and those teeth that appear to have come courtesy of Steve McClaren's mad dentist, her face seems to belong to several different people. The result is that she's not so much an oil painting, more a hastily arranged collage. But somehow it looks good on her. And as she demonstrated during her "Dam Vines" trial, never has a black wet suit been more thrillingly filled.

This year, assuming the Myleene Klass role (but without the class or that white bikini) is lads' mag favourite Gemma Atkinson. A former girlfriend of Man United star Cristiano Ronaldo, she at least has previous when it comes to lying down while a slimy creature crawls all over her.

Gemma, who would clearly fail an arse/elbow identity parade, as demonstrated by her laughable attempts in the spelling quiz, now finds herself in the last five purely because she manages to combine a shapely figure and tiny bikini with the kind of winning result that could turn heads in a spinal injury ward. Little wonder the lure of the pub's snug bar and cheesy nibbles has fast lost its appeal for me.

One of the less obvious attractions of I'm a Celeb… is that you get more of an insight into the contestants' real personalities than on any other reality show. Remember Jan Leeming from the last series? Who'd have thought that the apparently uber-professional ice maiden was in fact a deranged, hyper-anxious old dingbat? Bless her.

Similarly, this year wild rock chick Cerys has revealed herself to be a fragrant and vulnerable sweetie and chef John whatsit-skullface demonstrated that he is without any redeeming features.

Whilst in reality, "lovable cockney rogue" Rodney Marsh turned out to be the sort of gnarled old dinosaur who makes Fred Flintstone look like a Regency fop. In fact, it was only the appearance of a forlorn-looking goat (boasting the same skin tone as Janice but with marginally less facial hair than Lynne) that finally turned Rodney marshmallow soft.

The only other disappointment was the public's stupidity in relentlessly nominating Janice for Bushtucker Trials when, after shamelessly bottling her first, she was clearly going to opt out of her next eight without so much as even attempting to force a swamp slug down her no-doubt surgically enhanced oesophagus. Thus depriving us of the sort of gripping footage previously provided by deep throat have-a-go heroes Paul Burrell and Dean Gaffney.

However, this year, the producers have cunningly added an additional gut-wrenching ordeal - forcing us to endure those toe-curlingly awful trailers for Iceland. I'm surely not the only one who ends up chewing the carpet with embarrassment every time former contestants Kerry Katona and Jason Donovan start humiliating themselves in a way that the forced digestion of softly poached kangaroo testicles could never do. Even my squeamish kids have volunteered to tuck into a witchetty grub rather than go anywhere near one of Iceland's worryingly orange profiteroles.

But, in the end, it's all about the jungle celebs. And despite the fact there are dairy products with better shelf lives than most of the celebrities that braved bush camp this year, the show does have an enviable track record of successful career relaunches. Think Jordan, Peter Andre, Tony Blackburn, Joe Pasquale and Myleene Klass.

So this time next year, expect Janice and Lynne to be co-hosting their own version of a Trinny and Susannah bitch-fest. While Biggins will have kissed goodbye to his panto chums and will be firmly established as the new Parky. Or, if there's any justice, prime minister.

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Comments

  • Posted on 14 December 2007
  • at 9:29am
  • by wonesy

How can you watch this thing?

  • Posted on 30 November 2007
  • at 2:29pm
  • by pippyj
It will be interesting to see who wins tonight. The other celebs and the newspapers all seem to be pushing Biggins - but I am not sure that the public will go for it. He might have been an easygoing campmate (pardon the pun) but for viewers I think Janice has been the best value. When you consider her age the amount of physical tasks she has done well it's amazing. J was mean to her even though she had really hurt her leg - so that has put me right off him. As for her crying when people leave - she is an extrovert-type person and she was fond of Gemma and Cerys - so it is clearly not fake. I hope she wins.Didn't know about Grace's books will have to put one on my Xmas shopping list. Any recommendations?
  • Posted on 29 November 2007
  • at 5:01pm
  • by radish27

Janice may have ducked out of anything to do with creepy crawlys but you can't knock her ability when it comes to heights. Her balance on the wire in the trial she did with Rodney Marsh was amazing and she showed no fear at all in the sidecar with 'J' or when she and Anna got the chest.

  • Posted on 29 November 2007
  • at 11:14am
  • by astromum

don't be mean bradley. you will hurt graham's feelings.

  • Posted on 28 November 2007
  • at 7:17pm
  • by bradley27

When is Grace coming back?

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