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JoshBB · 24-10-2015, 07:10 PM

Source: http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2...ps-into-jungle

Quote:

Copeland MP Jamie Reed rejects offer to appear on reality TV show but speculation swirls around Simon Danczuk

Tory MP Nadine Dorries had her party whip withdrawn when she took part in I’m a Celebrity in 2012. The producers of I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here! are trying to persuade an anti-Corbyn Labour MP to appear on the jungle-survival reality TV show.

Jamie Reed, MP for Copeland in Cumbria, a former shadow health minister, said he was approached shortly after handing in his resignation from the shadow cabinet within minutes of Jeremy Corbyn’s victory. He turned down the offer.

But Simon Danczuk, the outspoken MP for Rochdale, who has called the Labour party under Corbyn a “deluded, bullying cult”, said he could not comment on whether he had also been asked to take part, fuelling speculation he could be considering a trip to the Australian jungle with Ant and Dec.

Writing for the Guardian, Reed said he suspected the programme makers hoped to capitalise on the hatred some Corbynistas had for him and other MPs who had dared to oppose their new leader.

I’m a Celebrity, which airs on ITV1 each autumn, makes money from viewers calling in to vote for contestants to take part in challenges, which have involved eating kangaroo testicles and a crocodile’s penis, as well as being buried alive in a coffin filled with cockroaches, crickets and meal worms.

In 2012, the Conservative MP Nadine Dorries had the whip withdrawn after taking part in the show without letting her party know. She was the first celebrity evicted after a week in which the public repeatedly voted for her to undergo bushtucker trials – eating a camel’s toe, an ostrich’s anus and some cattle genitals.

Shortly after losing his parliamentary seat in 2010, the former Liberal Democrat MP Lembit Opik took part in the show. He was voted off in week two after being bitten by a snake during a so-called immunity trial.

Explaining why he turned down the offer to meet the producers this time around, Reed wrote: “Filled with white terror, my mind drifted to thoughts of the furious far-left organising to torture me night after night on national TV. As they organised phone banks to keep me in the show, they’d happily make common cause with the evil capitalist fat-cats who devised such a devilish and compelling television format and whose coffers they would happily swell if it meant that a Labour MP was forced to eat witchetty grubs and worse.”

He said the producers tried to persuade him to take part by flattering him, saying he was an “honest, quick-witted and a down-to-earth individual” for whom the public had “enormous affection and respect”. He said he wasn’t interested because he wasn’t a celebrity and would find it impossible to serve his constituents from Australia.

Asked if he was going into the jungle, Danczuk, whom some Labour members in his constituency want to deselect, wrote in a text message: “I can’t comment on I’m a Celebrity!!”

Jess Phillips, MP for Birmingham Yardley, who made headlines by telling Diane Abbott to “**** off” after the veteran MP chastised her for querying the lack of women in Corbyn’s cabinet, joked that she was offended not to have been asked. But she insisted: “There is no way on earth I would ever … now Strictly, that would be different!”

Jacob Rees-Mogg, the aristocratic Tory MP for North East Somerset, said he had also not been invited to go to the jungle. “I’ve been snubbed!” he cried, before insisting: “It’s not really my scene. There is no money they could offer me within the bounds of possibility. If they were offering £50m instead of £10,000 or whatever it is they offer, it would be a different kettle of fish. I wouldn’t sacrifice my comfort or my dignity. Particularly my dignity.”

Hearing that Rees-Mogg had also been snubbed, Phillips changed her position: “If Jacob was going, I would go.”

Why does the media hate corbyn so much tbh