If, like me, you were expecting Nigel Farage to be chowing down on some particularly recherché marsupial offal during the new series of I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!, well I fear we will be disappointed. On the basis of the first episode, there will be the usual lack of real jeopardy (we’re a litigious society, after all), surplus of animal cruelty (grubs have feelings too, same as Farage), and deathly unfunny presentation by the superannuated Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly. Not that I’m looking for sympathy, but I feel like I’ve been reviewing this nonsense since the old Queen was on the throne (Victoria, not Elizabeth), and it doesn’t improve with age.
Indeed, if it were possible for this panto to sink lower than a skink’s belly, it’s now being cynically exploited by all concerned, by deliberately putting “controversial” politicians into the mix. Matt Hancock was the trial, more mainstream, pilot; now it’s Farage, who is not as nice as he looks. Nigel is trying to pass himself off as a “natural leader”/“in for a penny, in for a pound” bloke in the pub with the same schtick that he employed when he conned an uncomfortably large proportion of the British electorate into leaving the EU. Getting some tokens out of some gunge in the back of a pick-up isn’t that tough. It’s an exercise in cleaning up – what you might call “celeb-washing” – fatally damaged political reputations. On a boil wash. I’m a Celeb should be sponsored by Zanussi.
