[Red Moon]

Celebs, bugs and the joys of ritual torture

Nothing brightens an evening like ITV's current 'battle of the bitches'.

I mean, of course, the nutjob exhibition that is I'm A Celebrity. . . Get Me Out Of Here!

It's all knowingly ridiculous and bawdy. We put celebs, or wannabe slebs, in the modernday equivalent of stocks and make them eat kangaroo testicles or live Antipodean slugs in the Australian jungle.

Frankly, there is little on TV quite so stupid but quite so much fun. Those who are high-minded had better put on BBC4 this instant.

But you can't say that you don't know what you are getting with a show such as this because of the advert that precedes it.

It features two ex-participants at a party, coke-wreck Kerry Katona and Jason Donovan with his new hair.

They consider the 'do' they are at to be the pinnacle of sophistication because the food comes entirely from Iceland.

As for the real jungle critters, well, this year that grand old dame Malcolm McLaren walked out before he had walked in, claiming it was all fake.

He was probably aware that he could not outdo Johnny Rotten's masterful vaudevillian turn a couple of years back.

The star is the world's oldest, most predatory supermodel, Janice Dickinson, who has had so much plastic surgery she looks as if she is made from bits of other people – mainly the men she has bedded such as Jagger and Stallone.

She also seems to have some sort of hyperactivity disorder and cannot keep her huge mouth shut. When she first appeared, I had to phone a friend to ask if she were some kind of transsexual.

He said no and he knows about that sort of thing. Weirdly she is growing on me. She is this year's David Gest. Against her is pseudo earthmother Lynne Franks doing her Absolutely Dreary sanctimonious New Age wittering.

And to add to the coven we have wicked Thatcherite spawn Katie Hopkins, who didn't win the Apprentice but still boasts about being better than a man and now refers to herself in the third person. Never good.

She wants to be the new Simon Cowell but she has lapses where she is quite nice so I fear she may be the new Louis Walsh, which is surely worse than being buried in a coffin full of cockroaches.

Against the coven, we have Neanderthal Rodney Marsh, plus people from a boyband, a soap and a makeover show. There's also the utterly gorgeous Cerys Matthews from Catatonia. Why is she there?

Except to flirt with someone from EastEnders? Oh yes, and then there is Christopher Biggins and his camp entrance.

The other night, viewers could have watched yet another 'classy' Stephen Poliakoff drama with a dream cast and, I suspect, an event from the past that haunts the present and goes on for hours and hours.

Or you could see Janice attempting to eat the private parts of a crocodile. No contest. What makes it so compelling is that the biggest bitches of all are those nice boys Ant and Dec.

They relentlessly mock the celebrities. Their secret? They make each other laugh so we laugh too. Does this show tell us much about the state of the nation? No.

Just that strange sub-species wander from reality show to reality show in ever decreasing circles. But I like the way that every year we see older women, be they Christine Hamilton or Janet Street-Porter, as tough, resourceful and in charge.

It's all very British and almost medieval, this physical humiliation of celebrity. Those whom the gods make famous, we make eat bugs. And some days you can't ask for more than that.

Source: Daily Mail

[Hugo]

What a great article! I love the style. It actually made me laugh. I'm suprised the Daily Mail did an article on it.