I’m A Celeb’s Dean McCullough hates confined spaces…and I’ve got claustr-oaf-obia
I’M A Celebrity’s most tiresome fools don’t waste any time on that show.
They reveal themselves and all their phobias before the first ad break has even arrived.
Oti Mabuse, for instance, couldn’t wait to tell us she hates “things that move on their stomachs”, while Dean McCullough is claustrophobic and GK Barry cannot stand the thought of being “in a small space with loads of frogs”, like Cafe Rouge in St Paul’s.
The one who’s really got his work cut out for the next three weeks, though, is McFly’s Danny Jones, who’s got “a fear of the unknown”.
Because the unknowns are front and centre, all of the bloody time, in that jungle camp.
With the two most unknown and tiresome of the lot being Dean, a third-person-speaking crybaby from Radio 1, and GK Barry, who sounds as if she’s a famous hairdresser but is neither of those two things and just seems to earn a living shouting into cyberspace.
Self-help b******s
Slightly weirdly, there are two others in there who have names I definitely recognise, but bear only a passing resemblance to their former selves — Strictly’s Oti, who’s been carb-loading in the run-up to jungle starvation, and N-Dubz’ Tulisa, who as well as being “demi-sexual” is now also bilingual, speaking a fluent form of self-help b******s that allows her to say things like, “I need that soul family energy,” rather than the more formal: “You’re friend-zoned, Alan.”
None of them, though, can erase my sense of disappointment with the line-up on this year’s show which, following Nigel Farage’s relatively boring turn on the 2023 run, banned politicians from the camp, at the exact moment a General Election left dozens of suitable contenders at ITV’s mercy.
Desperately, forlornly, every night, the camera lingers on ‘TV personality’ Coleen, waiting for her to say something interesting.
The most suitable of the lot, clearly, would’ve been Jacob Rees-Mogg, who’d have sent Guardian journalists into a tailspin from the moment he raised a champagne flute in the opening credits and had them biting out their own eyeballs if he’d reclined on a camp bed, in his usual To The Manor Born style.
Instead, the divisive character it urgently needs will be appearing in the relative obscurity of his own Discovery+ reality show, from December onwards, while ITV has spaffed £1.5million on Coleen Rooney, despite the fact fellow Wags like Carly Zucker, Sheryl Gascoigne and even her nemesis, Rebekah Vardy, have never been anything other than crippling bores on this show.
The network’s still in a state of denial, obviously.
Desperately, forlornly, every night, the camera lingers on “TV personality” Coleen, waiting for her to say something interesting.
And waiting . . .
And waiting, until one of the other wiser and more rounded campmates digs her out of a hole.
It’d be wrong, at this point, if I didn’t mention my friend and colleague Jane Moore.
“Tough as old boots” she may be, but Jane’s also as compassionate and smart as they come, which is probably just as well as there was a detachment about Barry McGuigan evident even before he broke down, on Monday’s show, with the unbearable grief of his daughter Danika’s death.
Naive as I am, I thought Barry’s anguish was so raw and overwhelming it might force the camp’s worst offenders to dial down the tearful histrionics and nauseating displays of egomania that have made the series all but unwatchable.
Not a chance.
Since Monday’s show: Danny Jones has been sobbing away over a panic attack he once had on This Morning, Dean’s had a full-on “breakdown” at the Sinister Sarcophagus trial, Melvin Odoom’s Carol Vorderman obsession has reached the seriously creepy stage and GK Barry has spoken about no one other than herself, without ever giving any hint as to how she qualified for the “Celebrity” tag in the first place, other than the telling admission: “I watched a lot of Miranda boxed sets to learn how to be funny.”
Yeah, figures.
Group hug for Robbie
THREE hours after BBC Two’s Boybands Forever started, king of the pity party Robbie Williams suddenly declared he was, “in a very happy place”.
The name of that happy place being “Gstaad, Switzerland,” a caption which appeared underneath Robbie at the start of the documentary and really should’ve been his cue to stop moaning and thank his lucky stars he wasn’t still doing panto in Stoke-on-Trent.
Robbie has an infinite capacity to play the victim, though, and a willing audience in BBC Two, who had cut and pasted the exact same storyline here on to every single boyband who have all been destroyed, they’d have you believe, by a wicked alliance of svengali managers and the tabloid press. Including the terminally stupid ones, like Five, who were given first dibs on Britney’s multi-million-selling Hit Me Baby One More Time but turned it down because it was “f***ing w**k.”
A huge shame, as the real story of these groups is far more complex, interesting and funny than the lazy, one-size-fits-all version told by the Beeb, as was hinted at when it concluded, very solemnly, that 911 had gone on to “have a massive hit when they collaborated with Vietnamese superstar Duc Phuc.”
Although, like you, I will forever mourn the fact he didn’t collaborate with Gary Barlow, Howard Donald and Mark Owen and become Phuc That.
GREAT TV lies and delusions of the month. Big Brother, Will Best: “We’ve loved every minute. What a series it’s been.” Have I Got News For You, Carol Vorderman: “I don’t want to brag but . . .”
And The Last Leg, Josh Widdecombe: “As of this week, I’m a dancer who sometimes does comedy.”
Before this week? Neither.
I’M A Celeb, Dec: “When was the last time you saw five Australian choppers on screen at the same time?”
Series 11, the opening mixer on Married At First Sight: Australia.
Seeing as you ask.
Unexpected morons in the bagging area
MASTERMIND, Clive Myrie: “The word ‘low,’ meaning the opposite of ‘high’ is an anagram of the name of what bird of prey?”
Sam: “Eagle.”
I’m A Celebrity, Dec: “Name the footballer who’s from Egypt and plays for Liverpool?”
Dean McCullough: “Jose Mourinho.”
The Chase, Bradley Walsh: “Which British actress plays Kitty in the film Oppenheimer?”
David: “Sophia Loren.”
Bradley Walsh: “The BWF is the world governing body of what racquet sport?”
Alexander: “Cricket.”
Random irritations
TEARFUL I’m A Celeb invertebrate Dean McCullough highlighting the urgent need to bring back National Service. Every tedious sod on Strictly gushing away about Blackpool and its “iconic ballroom”.
And serial Panorama p***-taker Richard Bilton flying from Iceland to the Alps to Sydney to the Barrier Reef to Southern Carolina to California and back again to Britain, via Arizona, to answer the question Can Scientists Save The World?
Only to tell us: “Cutting carbon use is vital.” Yeah, you first, pal.
Great sporting insights
LEE HENDRIE: “It was an out-swinging in-swinging corner.”
Paul Merson: “The inevitable is often inevitable.”
And Kevin Gallen: “Doak was getting past the full back all the time.
“It was just a matter of time before he got past him.”
(Compiled by Graham Wray)
COMPARE and contrast. Trump’s new US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth was a US army major who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, where he was a platoon leader and won two Bronze Stars and two Army Commendation Medals, among other decorations.
Labour’s new Defence Secretary, John Healey, was a union PR and tutor at the Open University.
So which one, this week, do you think Adam Hills, host of The Last Leg, claimed had “absolutely no experience of military leadership, on a grand scale” and was “completely unqualified for his job?” Clue: It’s not the left-wing one.
MEANWHILE, back on Gary Barlow’s Wine Tour: South Africa.
The bloke at a vineyard’s electric bike hire shack to Gary and his mate Eliot Kennedy: “A couple of helmets?”
No, just Gary.
TV Gold
MARK RYLANCE transfixing the camera with every single gesture on BBC1’s brilliant Wolf Hall.
Robyn Malcolm and Peter Mullan in Channel 4’s After The Party.
And Bill Maher tearing America’s woke Left limb from limb with his “tough love Dems” rant on HBO’s Real Time.
A demolition (available to watch on YouTube) which is so word-perfect and brilliantly timed it’ll make you weep for the fact Britain hasn’t got a single satirist or mainstream TV comedian with the talent or the courage to do the same to two-tier Keir and the rest of his mediocrities.
Lookalike of the week
THIS week’s winner is I’m A Celeb’s GK Barry and Jar Jar Binks. Sent in by Oliver P, of Weymouth. Lookalike of the week wins an updated version of A Funny Way Of Life, the definitive biography of The Krankies, by Matt Bendoris.