To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, one must have a heart of stone not to laugh at the memory of Nigel Farage lying in a pit of snakes. For me, that was one of the most delicious moments ever in the long history of ITV’s I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!, although the thought of Nadine Dorries getting her laughing gear around an ostrich anus in a Bushtucker Trial also makes me grin.
People you love to hate being made to do terrible things is one of the joys of the series, now entering its 24th season, but I’m worried about this year’s line-up. There’s usually a good mix of nice and nasty, but the cast of this series is too full of people who seem really decent and won’t enable me to use my overactive schadenfreude gene. Seeing people like Barry McGuigan, Alan Halsall and Oti Mabuse having a horrible time with mud, the nastier parts of animals and some big insects doesn’t quite work for me. Like a pantomime, I’m a Celeb needs a good villain.
