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.
Now, though, it does. Wearing his nicest union jack socks, Farage was dropped in the middle of the Australian outback, and immediately couldn’t believe how easy he was going to have it. Unlike last year, when Matt Hancock faced real hostility from his campmates, Farage found himself being warmly greeted by the first contestant to see him, a This Morning presenter called Josie Gibson. “Can’t be worse than Brexit! Only joking! Ooh hoo!” she hooted of their first challenge. The second contestant, 26-year-old YouTuber Nella Rose, was too locked into projecting her persona on to the public to even register who she was dealing with.
Nor was Farage going to face appropriate interrogation from the hosts. “Did he veer off a bit too far to the right?”, chirped Ant and Dec after a clip of Farage driving a car, to the clear delight of the people who are paid to laugh at them. When the time eventually came for him to meet the full intake of campmates, he was greeted with even more hugs and smiles. “Fair play, mate,” one of them said. Hopefully at least one of these people will prove to be this year’s Charlene White, who took Hancock to task last time around. But on the basis of his arrival – which brushed past any potential awkwardness in favour of a detailed discussion of the format of the television show First Dates – it’s going to be a cakewalk for him.
This was reinforced by Farage’s first challenge, which involved him putting his head in some snakes. He did this with quiet resolve, unlike the YouTuber whose primary tactic was to shriek. That wouldn’t have worked for Farage, because he knows what he’s signed up for. Do a trial, smile through the disgust and pray you come out of it looking like a good egg. Rehabilitation by light entertainment. This is what we’ve come to. What a grim, cynical show this has become.
Matt Hancock is to blame for this, obviously. Last year’s big draw, Hancock – a man whose mishandling of care homes during the pandemic cost 20,000 lives – proved that nothing can redeem the irredeemable like being paid to eat kangaroo arse on the telly. At first, the public rushed to punish him by making him undergo endless bushtucker trials. But by the end of it, some quarters were declaring him to be an OK guy. And now he’s going to be best known as being Nigel Farage’s warmup guy.
The show isn’t even pretending it’s about anything else. As far as it’s concerned, its contestants are now Nigel Farage and a bunch of cut-price chaff. Some of them spent the opening episode balancing on a pole on top of a skyscraper, during which Fred from First Dates made a lot of fuss about the state of his testicles. Some of the others had a bunch of ants tipped on them. But really they’re just the supporting act to the xenophobe, and it would be silly to pretend otherwise.
Anecdotally, the Farage hire may end up backfiring. Last year, not even the presence of Hancock could stop Twitter from yammering on incessantly about I’m a Celebrity. This year, though, nothing. No tweets. No excitement. No real anger, even. Just the quiet acceptance that this isn’t going to be something they’ll watch this year. We’ll know how representative this is when the overnights come in, but we should all hold hands and hope Farage has turned viewers off. Because, if he hasn’t, it’s bound to be Boris Johnson next year. I really don’t have the energy for this any more.
I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! is on ITV1 and ITVX.
