It is ridiculous to think that I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! was ever a good television programme. After all, it is a hold-out from the nasty 00s, a grim sideshow that has long traded on public humiliation and animal cruelty (last year, more than 17,000 complaints were made about the latter). It’s the modern equivalent of the stocks, but with all the vicarious thrill deadened by the knowledge that its subjects have been paid several thousands of pounds to be treated like that. It has always been awful.
But how easy it is to be nostalgic about the good old days of I’m a Celebrity now that Nigel Farage is on it. However repellent the show was, however many times it forced people to tears in the name of entertainment, at least it didn’t have Farage’s frog face gurning and leering through it.
