I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!

It's that time of year. Big Brother is long over so all other copy-cat reality- turn your brain to mush- programs come crawling out of the wood work to secure ITV1's finances for the next 200 years. This one is probably the most watchable out of this seasons offerings (Celebraty Love Island was a new low point in the history of television) but it's still the same old-same old. Ten or so 'celebraties' (I use the term VERY loosely) are dumped in the 'Austrailian Jungle' (most likely a set behind Woolies in South London) and made to 'fend for themselves' when they are put in 'dangerous situations' (with a team of First Aiders stood by, of course). I have watched one or two of the episodes this year and they failed to hold my interest. My advise, don't watch it. You'll probably get addicted to it and it'll rule your life for 4 or 5 weeks until it finishes and you'll forget about it.

Watch "Life In The Undergrowth" instead.

Yes, the people that go into 'the jungle' aren't always technically celebs, but that doesn't mean to say they aren't by the time they come out.

Come November ITV pretty much turn their evening entertainments slots over to 'I'm a Celeb' and are rarely disappointed. It's a long running reality show that hasn't gone stale (take note X Factor) and that's largely because although the format is always the same roughly, the personalities of the celebs going in shake things up each time.

It is of course always held together by the wonderful Ant and Dec, who rightly win awards for it every year.

It's not exactly high brow entertainment, but entertaining it always is

I'm not a real fan of celebrity shows just because I find the scramble for fame to often be quite distasteful and heavy with the smell of desperation. Likewise I'm not a big fan of "reality" shows because, although many are framed as being "helpful" most of the them actually draw their audience in with the promise of mocking or degrading those taking part; a look at Big Brother's exit shows will demonstrate what reality shows are about – almost everybody gets booed, meaning that the majority watch it to dislike the people and gossip about them. So when I'm A Celebrity started I gave it as much of a wide berth as I could but the influence and viewing habits of various partners and flatmates meant I have ended up watching bits and pieces of several series.

And I have to be honest and say that at best I'm unimpressed while at worst I'm impressed by how desperate some people are to get a boost of fame. We often wonder what we would do for money ("would you do x for a thousand pounds") but on this show we find out that some people will eat bugs and be covered in snakes or rats for the promise of several hundred thousand pounds. The basic idea of the show is that the celebrities stay in a forest clearing with so much technology crammed into it to watch them that even the monkeys must have headsets on. Here they bicker, fight and flirt while a section of the population that rely totally on the Sun and the Mirror for their news gossip and titter along. Each night we get a challenge and the public vote for who takes part.

Normally the trials are pretty horrible and they take pleasure in degrading the celebs, safe in the knowledge that most of them will do whatever it takes to get the headlines the next day. It is all quite grubby and unpleasant and for many of the trials I just left the room feeling rather concerned about what passes for entertainment these days. The inane relationships and personalities I can cope with but the fascination with degrading people is not something I particularly like.

Regardless though, like all the "best" (and by best I mean popular) reality and celeb shows, I'm A Celebrity is made or broken by the tabloids and for that reason alone it will always play up anything it can. As a result the real people get lost in the edit, fights are brought to the fore and bugs are chewed while vomit is choked back. Overall this is a pointless vacuous affair which, for that reason, draws a crowd happy with just that. I would grumble on about how this is a new low, but with the way things are generally headed a newer low would probably have been hit on television before I'd even finished writing this sentence. Ah well, give the people what they want I suppose, but I personally want no part of it.

The godfather of celebrity reality shows returns, and it still gets the best billing (prime time ITV) because it's the funniest, and most fun. There's another 'so what' set of celebs, but - like Strictly - the show has shown it can handle that. The secret to its success is everybody's favourite Hiberno-Geordies, Ant and Dec.

You might have expected the show to feel refreshed, then, after Ant (or Dec)'s hiatus last year; but personally I think something has gone that won't return. Maybe his mugging is now genuinely more desperate and cynical; maybe the unwanted insight into his private life just makes it seem that way. But where Dec (or Ant) still manages to convince with the cheeky schoolboy act they've been doing since PJ and Duncan, on the other side of the platform his partner (whichever one it is) is starting to seem just a little bit creepy.

That matters because good nature is the show's keynote; yes it makes people look daft but it never humiliates them, and it's usually the good natured that win it. Admittedly, the days of Jordan and Our Kerry, who had long if troubled careers off the back of it, seem to be over. The TV world has realised that there isn't much it can do with these people after they have thus refreshed their fame; few have any talent except being themselves; at best, they go on to co-host one of I'm A Celeb's own spin-off shows. And now Charlotte thingy has been dropped from Saturday Night Takeaway: Ant and Dec, how could you?

Sticking a bunch of C list celebrities out in the jungle seems to be a good idea on paper but is ruined by the idea of not keeping them there for ever . But what really annoyed me about the show is the amount of coverage it got in newspapers and the breakfast television shows . Everytime you opened a British tabloid newspaper you`d find several pages dedicated to the storm in a tea spoon that was the previous night`s edition . Same when you watched GMTV in the morning , the presenters would be interviewing the previous night`s loser every 15 minutes . Getting too much of a good thing is one thing , getting too much of a fairly bad thing is quite another

Of the votes cast Tony Blackburn was probably the deserved winner because he didn`t whine and moan ( Unlike the rest of contestants ) and never talked behind everyone else`s back ( Christine Hamilton did this all the time - Thank gawd the tories are out of power ) , but from a purely hetrosexist point of view I thought Nell McAndrew deserved to win since she spent much of her time there dressed in a bikini

I`ve just seen the second series . The novelty wears off very quickly