Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. Most of the celebrities summoned together for I’m a Celebrity… South Africa, the school reunion from hell, look remarkably chipper a decade or two after their first appearances. Paul Burrell (Diana), Helen Flanagan (Corrie), Fatima Whitbread (Olympics), Carol Vorderman (TV brain box), Amir Khan (boxing), Jordan Banjo (dancer), Phil Tufnell (cricketer), and Shaun Ryder (Happy Mondays) are all instantly recognisable, and likeable. Janice Dickinson, being the only American on the scene, cheerfully embarrasses all concerned when she asks most of them, basically, who on earth they are. Flanagan explains that she was an actor on Coronation Street – “Oh, I’ve heard of that” – and Tufnell has a go at explaining cricket. Poor Whitbread is asked “are you Italian?”, as if it’s a job. Dickinson also has the annoying habit of speaking without any volume control, as if she’s Brian Blessed addressing a public meeting at the Albert Hall. I suspect she’ll be making an early exit.
Ant and Dec, who have a preternatural tendency to immature with age, describe the get-together as “the best are back”, but I can’t help feeling that it might be more a question of which celebs have a little more time on their hands these days. Still, as Ryder observes in the Bush Telegraph, they’re all “dead natural, down to earth… don’t seem to be any knobheads”. That’s fair enough, but sadly his happy assessment of those who’ll be keeping him close company for the next few weeks is shattered by the arrival of a late addition to the cast, Gillian McKeith. You may remember her for her pseudoscientific televised studies of poo some years ago.
