Elsewhere, the class of series 24 – I know, it feels like 158 – includes former Strictly Come Dancing professional Oti Mabuse; McFly singer Danny Jones; Tulisa from N-Dubz; 1985 WBA featherweight champion Barry McGuigan; and a Radio 1 DJ called Dean who’s presumably not done TV before because his teeth might blind viewers.
Then there’s the bloke who plays Tyrone on Corrie; Kiss100’s Melvin Odoom; journalist and Loose Woman Jane Moore; and finally GK Barry, who might have the name of a cult 1960s sci-fi author but is, in fact, principally a TikTok influencer.
It’s hardly a galaxy of stars, or even a group of unknown quantities. By my count, over half of them have significant previous experience in reality TV, and in the case of Jones, a man who seems to detonate with laughter at the end of every sentence, it’s his third such competition *this calendar year*, after The Masked Singer and The Voice. Does his family not miss him? Are royalties drying up? I will personally stream “All About You” for a week if it means we don’t have to see him until at least 2026.
“I’m very, very nervous, it’s a fear of the unknown,” Jones said, in the first voice-over of the series, but with I’m A Celebrity, there is no unknown anymore. It’s been on since the year the Queen Mother died, and there’s barely been any meaningful change over that 22 years.
Last night, as the theme song kicked in, the khaki and red outfits flashed up, the sweeping drone shots set the scene, the people off-camera who are literally paid to laugh at Ant and Dec’s jokes (are they being dangled over the side of the walkway?) guffawed, it felt physically tiring to watch.
The whole thing is utterly bereft of new ideas, which would be fine if viewing figures were steady, but we know they aren’t. So here we watched as the group acted surprised at their plush villa being a charade, at the “welcome drink” being fish guts, and at there being a sky dive in the first episode. Watching a pop star and a Radio 1 DJ skydive would have been dull TV in 1976, let alone now.