[Red Moon]

I'm a Celebrity: Game, set and match Martina. That's life, Esther

Janet Street-Porter appeared on 'I'm a Celebrity', and lived to tell the tale. As the new series looms, she predicts triumph for Ms Navratilova – and disaster for Ms Rantzen

Who will cry first? Who will snog? Who will start ranting about the rations? Will Brian Paddick do a Burrell and tell all about his former boss, Sir Ian Blair? Will Esther Rantzen be as patronising as my former secretary, earth mother Lynne Franks? (Answer: definitely.) Ooh, I can't wait! Watching I'm A Celebrity is one of life's guilty pleasures, like eating a pain aux raisins when you get to work.

We're smart, we're discerning, we're picky about our friends. So why will millions of us spend Sunday evening (and many hours over the coming weeks) glued to our televisions engrossed in a group of ill-matched people we've mostly never heard of? Forget Big Brother, I'm A Celebrity is the gold card of reality television. The show hasn't even started yet and this year's inmates (sorry, contestants) are already bickering over who got paid what. In the Battle of the Babes, Dani Behr is said to have pocketed four times the £10,000 fee being paid to WAG Carly Zucker, while glamour model Nicola McLean has to be content with just £7,500.

Let's be honest, all three have been signed up to do one thing: get their kit off as frequently as possible and take a lot of showers. Forget their fees, all will profit handsomely from photoshoots after they've left the jungle. The Mylene Klass factor – looking amazing in a small bikini while not saying much of note – is very important to ratings, and I'm A Celeb's executive producers put together their cast very carefully. I know, I appeared on the show in 2004 and spent years as a telly producer. The line-up is carefully designed to result in maximum confrontation and the programme makers will have spent months making sure their choices tick all the right boxes.

To succeed like I'm A Celeb – peaking at 8.2 million viewers last year – you have to appeal to the broadest audience possible, and the show has consistently proved to be a reliable banker for ITV over the years. This time out, when ad revenues are plummeting, Celeb needs to deliver.

The essential ingredients are fit young women for male viewers, a soap star or two for the ITV core audience and a couple of gays or sexually ambiguous celebs who will play well to those who might normally watch Channel 4. You need some mouthy, opinionated individuals to stir discontent around the campfire and entice middle-class viewers, and, of course, a washed-up star from yesteryear.

Much has been made of the fact that half of this year's team are middle-aged and older, with one pundit calling it "I'm A Pensioner Get Me Out of Here". The brilliant range of oldies on offer is a masterstroke: Martina Navratilova, Esther, Paddick and Robert Kilroy-Silk have very little in common except giant egos. Forget the youth audience. These days, ratings rely on the middle-aged and elderly viewers who make up the biggest section of the population. Just look at the huge success John Sergeant has had on Strictly Come Dancing.

The fact is, all these people would appear on I'm A Celeb for nothing. Play the game well and it's a show that changes your life and reinvigorates your career. On the day I left, I had 80 offers of work, and I was completely unprepared for the level of recognition that it brought. People still remember the show, and loads of women liked the fact that I came across as plain-speaking. But mess up, and you're confined to media oblivion.

Brian Harvey (formerly in East 17) was in the show with me but started losing his cool and demanding bottled mineral water. He was finally removed, much to everyone's relief. Jan Leeming, another whinger, didn't do her career any favours by taking part, and she's been reduced to looking for Mr Right on the internet lately. Jason Donovan, on the other hand, will be starring in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert when it opens in London next year.

So it's a bit of a gamble. I decided to take part in 2004, the first journalist on the show, for a fee way in excess of that being paid to this year's participants. From the producer's point of view, I ticked several boxes: mouthy, work for an upmarket newspaper (read by the middle classes), older, already known to viewers. Previously I'd been reluctant but Johnny Rotten's glorious outbursts changed my mind. I've produced enough television to know exactly what I was getting involved with.

The key to not making a fool of yourself is discipline. Every time viewers saw me raving at Paul Burrell, it was because I'd been told to liven things up. What makes great viewing is the naivety of the contestants, Burrell droning on about the Queen being "like one of us" even though she had 20 corgis and piles of blotting paper in all the rooms at Sandringham to soak up their pee.

It was television gold. Equally fabulous was when he told me about Diana's visit to Mother Teresa and subsequent desire to "live a simple life", even though she spent her last holiday on a multimillion-pound yacht.

My job was to tease these revelations out of Burrell (who had told the producers he would not be mentioning Diana), and I enjoyed our exchanges. When I told him he'd neglected his family for decades to pander to a spoilt princess, I knew viewers would agree.

To survive in the hothouse atmosphere of the jungle, you need to monitor everything you say before you open your mouth. Lynne Franks had no idea she was coming across as so bossy, I'm sure. The hardest thing to endure is the endless, low-level wittering of the more intellectually challenged campers, as well as the non-stop droning of those who have an opinion about everything. Kilroy-Silk and Esther should be very careful in this department. How we hated John Burton Race, whereas Antony Worrall Thompson seemed far more vulnerable. Some contestants seem to completely lose the plot; Carol Thatcher answering the call of nature in the middle of the night was a delight. Maybe being away from cocktails for a couple of weeks dulls the senses.

I was determined to take charge of the cooking because it gave me something creative to do (the camp-site is deliberately very small with nowhere to walk or exercise) and I could control portion sizes. The most repellent aspect of camp life isn't the low-level farting or snoring, but the wretched grabbing at food when you're surviving on minimal rations.

I've camped in Australia and New Zealand so I had eaten bush food, including wallaby, crocodile and kangaroo, but cooking a mutton bird (a very fatty and salty seabird) was the ultimate challenge. When I caught eels, skinned them and cooked them, I couldn't believe it when my picky fellow campers refused to eat them.

Emotions run high in the camp, with the slightest mishap causing floods of tears. And viewers are really vindictive; show the slightest sign you're not coping and they are bound to vote for you to participate in the nastiest challenges. The singer Natalie Appleton wept on the hour, every hour, and seemed to think that even the trees might harm her. When not sobbing, she fought with Sophie Anderton who'd only recently left rehab and felt rather vulnerable.

Attention-seeking behaviour predominates. Burrell tore the sleeves out of his shirt and dyed it pink, Fran Cosgrave wore a hideous bandana and checked himself in a mirror every five minutes. You always get people "singing" around the campfire, a blatant attempt to endear themselves to viewers, score a record deal or promote their last album. Nancy Sorrell and Sheila Ferguson were forever bursting into song during my internment, but thankfully both were ejected before me, so it doesn't work.

Derided by critics as car-crash telly, or the modern equivalent of gladiatorial sport, the show raises huge sums for the charities nominated by the contestants; I chose the Elton John Aids Foundation charity, which benefited by about £90,000.

It changed my life in so many positive ways. I loved waking and hearing the birds each day. I didn't mind the rats; at least they didn't moan. I developed a bit of tolerance towards other humans, and, most important of all, I learnt when to keep my mouth shut. I'm not pals with my former inmates; I didn't know who most of them were anyway. Lynne and I are still friends, and Carole and I did a television series together a couple of years ago. Most of all, I've loved the public feedback, it's been nothing but positive. And I can cook a kangaroo stew any time I need to. My prediction: Martina will walk it, and Esther will be the hate figure. But anything can happen; that's the sheer joy of the coming months.

The line-up: Janet's verdict

Esther Rantzen Famous but not cuddly. Her employees say she's demanding and regal, full of self-importance. She'll be unpopular unless she shows vulnerability. I'd say she's too dreary to win.

Brian Paddick The Lib Dem candidate for London Mayor is looking for a new career. He's nice, but hardly star material. Unlikely to stay in long unless he comes up with loads of revelations.

Martina Navratilova My top tip, and a lesbian hasn't won before. I'd predict an all-female final. Martina is charming. Will make mincemeat of Kilroy-Silk and has a wicked sense of humour.

Robert Kilroy-Silk Vain, and past his sell-by date. Not a chance. Very opinionated, might go down well with female viewers of a certain age, but a turn-off for most thinking people. If he can be enticed into a debate about politics, could put his foot in it.

And the rest...

Carly Zucker, model
Dani Behr, presenter
George Takei, actor
Joe Swash, actor
Nicola McLean, model
Simon Webbe, singer

Source: The Independent

[Jackie]

I'm A Pensioner Get Me Out of Here".

[jonsep]

the thing with navratilova is that shes very competative and the gp may find her a bit annoying.