Britain is broken” is a phrase we hear a lot these days, probably a bit too much if we’re all being honest with ourselves (we’ve still got running water, after all), but it seems that the televisual institution that is I’m a Celebrity… Get Me out of Here! is the latest to suffer from the national malaise.
The problem is that the lineup for this year’s contest on ITV looks to be far too nice and is, for that reason, a regrettable downgrade from more recent years, when at least one despised figure from public life would gamely take part in the jungle challenges. Usually, though not exclusively, this wretch was a politician in urgent need of money, rehabilitation or just missing the attention, and the producers were more than happy to oblige them.
Last year, you may recall, the odious Nigel Farage went to the outback to replenish his undernourished Coutts bank accoint with the £1.5m fee and to remind the voters that, in what was soon to be an election year, he was still around to inflict further damage on the economy and national cohesion.
The year before, it was Matt Hancock, the great lothario of the National Health Service, his political career in ruins. He was looking for forgiveness and, presumably, some sort of role in life (he’s still only 46). So appalled were people about the guy apparently being rewarded for failure by ITV, that an online petition to stop Hancock from appearing on the show attracted 40,000 signatures.
The same sense of public outrage, or at least disquiet, attached itself to various random others who transitioned from in or around the political jungle to the reality TV version – Carol Thatcher (who won in 2012); Christine Hamilton, professional and self-described battleaxe; Nadine Dorries (who should surely be given another run now to publicise her conspiracy theories); Lembit Opik, the light-hearted Lib Dem; the controversial Katie Hopkins; the silky Robert Kilroy-Silk; Stanley Johnson, who has a lot to answer for; and obscure ex-Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale. The absurd former royal butler Paul Burrell also gave people a focus for irrational anger on a winter’s evening. And that is how it should be.
But this year, it seems that ITV is no longer prepared to act as a laundromat for those who find themselves stained by their public life, with only the redoubtable newspaper columnist Jane Moore giving us much hope for getting our sensibilities bruised by “outspoken” views.
Those who populate the political and allied trades are a shrewd bunch who know full well that any of the exotic offal they’re required to consume on camera is still fit for human consumption and, in principle, no different to what they get served up at a constituency function or in the Green Room at the BBC. Being covered in creepy crawlies is a bit much, true, but it’s not for long, and think of the cash…
I’m a Celebrity had become a case of “who’s using who”, and the likes of Farage and Hancock were cynically using the telly people rather than the other way around. It was an unbearable inversion of media culture for ITV, though it sometimes made for unbeatable viewing. In due course, the renewed interest in Farage and the gilding of his “bit of a character” image helped him get into parliament. For Hancock, I’m told he became an unlikely heartthrob in sections of the Mumsnet generation. The rest of us were just reminded about how grim they were and are.
I mean, I can’t say I’m that bothered about seeing a soap star like Alan Hansall going through ritual humiliation when they do that every time a script lands on the doorstep, or N-Dubz Singer Tulisa Contostavlos opening up to presenter and DJ Melvin Odoom. Coleen Rooney is a more consequential sort of celeb I suppose, but she’d really make more sense as a contestant if rival WAG Rebekah Vardy was also there (Vardy came ninth in 2017, by the way).
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It’s not as if there aren’t some spectacular prospective recruits out there. You could actually make quite a good series just by filling the camp with all the extant former leaders of the Conservative Party – Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss, Boris Johnson, Theresa May, David Cameron, Michael Howard, Iain Duncan Smith, William Hague and John Major. The chat around the fire would be fascinating. Is it too much to ask that Ant and Dec might open up their contacts book and ring Prince Andrew, a man with an expensive home to keep up? Is it out of the question to ask Justin Welby, who may soon have more time on his hands? How about one of them gets parachuted in, to liven things up halfway through?
It seems that the only people ITV is rumoured to have lined up in the way of surprise late entries are Love Island favourite Maura Higgins and the Reverend Richard Coles, Vicar of Kindness. Barry McGuigan, who’ll be entering the jungle on day one, is similarly the sweetest of boxers ever to enter the ring, and I’d be surprised if dancer Oti Mabuse, DJ Dean McCullough, influencer GK Barry or McFly’s Danny Jones are going to spark demos in Trafalgar Square.
It’s wintertime, it’s panto season, we’re celebrating the birth of Christ, and we need to hate some people on the telly. There are literally hundreds of failed, unemployed ex-MPs with tarnished reputations out there worried about who’s going to pay for their next two-bottle lunch. They’re thoroughly unlikeable failures… get them into there!