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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Rhik Samadder

Shark! Celebrity Infested Waters: I’m absolutely hooked by this cheeky, danger-packed reality show

From left: Ross Noble, Helen George, Sir Lenny Henry, Lucy Punch and Dougie Poynter in Shark! Celebrity Infested Waters.
Deep end … Ross Noble, Helen George, Lenny Henry, Lucy Punch and Dougie Poynter in Shark! Celebrity Infested Waters. Photograph: Adam Lawrence/ITV

I am obsessed with sharks. Fifty years on from Jaws, and for me no film can touch it. I trawl YouTube for unspeakable footage. On a recent holiday to France, I made my nonplussed household watch every shark documentary on National Geographic. I’ll even make time for guff like Jaws 4 or Sharknado 5: Global Swarming. I’m metaphorically chumming the water at every opportunity. Every so often, something shows up.

Shark! Celebrity Infested Waters (ITV1, Monday 14 July, 9pm) sees seven public figures with a fear of sharks mercilessly pushed into the water to swim with some. Say no more – I’m hooked. The victims – sorry, participants – include Lenny Henry, Lucy Punch, Ross Noble and the bassist from McFly. I like some of these people very much, and hope they don’t mind that I would love them to be ripped in half and devoured in high definition, thrashing about in a vortex of reddening water. It’s nothing personal.

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