ITV
Say what you like about Big Brother at least it provides different varieties of tedium. They vary the tasks, switch things up, have fun with them. And every now and again it produces something brilliant. The
Box task, the Electrocution task, the Wedding task – all inspired in their own ways providing moments of slapstick, pathos and emotional sadism for our entertainment. But as I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here enters its 9000th year it still relies primarily on our primal fear of creepy crawlies. Spiders, locusts, maggots, dung beetles, Christopher Biggins — they’re all here and you’d better get used to it. Because if you don’t like watching a minor celebrity pulling cockroaches out of her shorts then you’re fucked.
"As I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here enters its 9000th year it still relies primarily on our primal fear of creepy crawlies. Spiders, locusts, maggots, dung beetles, Christopher Biggins – they’re all here and you’d better get used to it"
I’m calling this now: I’m A Celebrity is done. I’m as over it as it’s possible for a boy to be. Over it, under it, through it – the very mention of it depresses me. I cannot watch Katie Price get covered in wasp mucus again; I don’t want to see another Hollyoaks actress crying into her sleeping bag; I don’t want to see the 1984 Superstars Champion being thrown out of a helicopter; I don’t want to see kangaroo spunk drool from the mouth of Paul Burrell as he noshes on Skippy’s balls; I don’t want to see Darren Day‘s Frank Spencer; I don’t want to see Dean Gaffney ever; I don’t want to see a fake pair of tits smeared with fish guts, tits that come complete with the implicit expectation that I should enjoy the schadenfreude while I can because, you know, glamour models and fish guts – it doesn’t happen every day.
"Totally bereft of ideas, irredeemably dull and hopelessly fixated on animal’s cocks, it is as broken as the careers of its participants"
Do they ever imagine that there might be reason it doesn’t happen every day? Unlikely. I’m A Celebrity producers are not a complicated bunch. Getting celebrities to sign up for the show is their biggest challenge and this is a particularly brutal year. If you’ve appeared in the paper in the past three years then you’re probably too famous. There’s her who used to be in Eastenders, him from Hollyoaks, that gay design couple, someone who was in a band and Jimmy White. He was last famous when snooker was fashionable, before your Internets and your mobile phones. It’s pitiful.
Ant and Dec present in the exact same tone they always have and that’s fine as far as it goes but it can’t save this dog of a show from the knacker’s yard. Totally bereft of ideas, irredeemably dull and hopelessly fixated on animal’s cocks, it is as broken as the careers of its participants. In the name of all that is holy, end this nonsense now.
The best thing about it: Ant and Dec are still bearable.
The worst thing about it: The life sapping repetition.
The verdict on I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here 2009: Enough.
Marks out of 10: 3
Imagined: Friday, November 20, 2009