TV review: I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here, ITV

Published on Friday 20 November 2009 22:53

EVENINGS in front of the television are always a trial when you've got teenage daughters, but the last few weekends have been particularly traumatic. The schedules have been taken over by a two-headed creature called Jedward, who now has the sort of stranglehold on proceedings once enjoyed, in more innocent times, by the likes of Sooty and Basil Brush.

In the interests of harmony you try to find something positive in whatever the rest of your family are watching, but sometimes it's just not possible. And Saturdays have become particularly difficult, because the rise of that x-rated monstrosity on The X Factor has coincided with the virtual elimination of any sporting interest in the BBC's rival show, Strictly Come Dancing.

Inexplicably, tennis legend Martina Hingis was booted out in Week One of the dance show, to be followed in subsequent episodes by Richard Dunwoody and Joe Calzaghe. Last weekend Phil Tufnell was eliminated while sand-allergic long-jumper Jade Johnson was sidelined because of injury.

Was there nothing left on the box to save the day for those of us who need a sport connection, however tenuous, in every programme? Things looked grim – but then came I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here, and with a double helping, no less.

First there was Jimmy White, the closest snooker came to being rock 'n' roll before Ronnie O'Sullivan arrived on the scene. While in days gone by he looked like the sort of emaciated, Dickensian urchin who might be found playing bass in a band supporting the Sex Pistols, the middle-aged Jimmy boasts a fuller figure – not so much rock 'n' roll, perhaps, as sausage roll.

More relevantly to Celebrity, he is also very much at ease with himself, which does not make for the kind of television the producers are looking for.

Other cast members may be there "for closure" (as the hapless Katie Price claimed) or simply to grab some attention. White looks like he's only there for want of anything better to do.

Thankfully, just as it was all getting a bit dull down in the jungle, along came Joe Bugner. That's Hungarian-born British boxer Joe Bugner, who calls himself "Aussie Joe" these days since assuming Australian citizenship some time ago.

Actually living in the country where the show takes place put Joe at an advantage – one which, despite his protestations to the contrary, he has been eager to exploit. "I will act as a fatherly figure to the younger generation and to the old ones too, because I happen to know a little bit more about Australia," he declared on Thursday night's show.

He then proceeded to talk some complete guff about ticks which either have a habit of burrowing through your skin into your heart and killing you, or prefer to take a more intimate route into the human body.

"I think he's a bit of a joker," said Samantha Fox, not laughing.

Nobody had laughed earlier, either, when he made an offhand remark claiming that Aids had been "created by the CIA".

Fortunately, they all decided he was too much of an idiot to be seriously offensive, although a spokesperson for the show still felt obliged to announce he had gone too far.

Having freaked out many of his camp-mates with his lurid tales and alienated the rest with his asinine assertions, Joe had the chance to redeem himself when it came to the competition to see which team would get to live in the lap of luxury with pillows and a fridge and proper food and everything, and which would be expelled from this fool's paradise.

The task was simple: contestants had to stand in a row, each one holding a stick above their head and keeping a water-filled container closed with it.

Boring, but easy, surely, if you are the competitor with the biggest biceps in the place. But did Joe come into his own? No.

Instead, luckily for him, it was team-mate Sabrina Washington who outlasted the rest. Jimmy and Katie were on the winning side as well, and they all trooped off happily together to find their supplies of beer and chocolate.

Then dinner was announced: good old bangers and mash. "Sausages!", Joe salivated lovingly, sounding uncannily nothing like the talking dog which appeared many years ago on That's Life and still gets an obligatory mention every time the topic crops up.