Dear Gillian

I don't really do this often, but I feel compelled to blog about a TV show. Show called I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here! http://celebrity.itv.com/2010/ For those not in the know, it is a TV reality show, where celebrities (playing fast and loose with words "reality" and "celebrity" here) are dropped into the Australian jungle for three weeks during which time they endure Bushtucker Trials involving goo, creepy crawlies and eating kangaroo penis, balls or bottom. Quite possibly all of the above.

It's a great show. It really is. Why, I hear you ask? Well in all honesty, there's nothing quite as satisfying as seeing a group of has-beens trying desperately to stay in the limelight while the show producers are doing everything they possibly can to strip them from that last little thread of dignity. And doing it quite successfully, I might add. How dignified would you feel after crawling through a tunnel filled with spiders, cockroaches, rats, snakes and goo, just to grab a hold of few plastic stars which mean your camp is eating something other than rice and beans tonight?

Some of these has-beens did quite well out of the show over the years, but really the lucky ones are few and far in between. Mostly the public laughs at them for the three weeks they're in there and then forget all about them until the ITV compilation show around Christmas time.

But enough with my ramblings, and to the point. The point why I'm writing about a TV show. Two words; Gillian McKeith. The once-presenter of You Are What You Eat, #notarealdoctor and poo-inspector extraordinaire. These days he calls herself a nutritionist and some time ago she basically went around a couple of years on TV in the UK telling people to eat mung beans, shifting through their poo and calling herself a doctor. Doctor she ain't but she may know a thing or two about mung beans, being a vegan and all that. Just to make one thing clear, and I'm using the help of Dara O'Briain here to make it clear as day. Nutritionist is to a dietitian what a toothologist is to a dentist. Ok? I  could call myself a nutritionist and get into no trouble at all with any type of authority.

Clearly in a bid to boost her non-existent celebrity profile at the moment, Dear Gillian decided to sign up for a stint in the jungle. She told everyone from the very beginning she's afraid of all bugs, snakes, spiders and basically everything with more than four legs, I imagine. Note to Dear Gillian: when you say this on air, every viewer in the country capable of dialling the number to vote for you to be thrown into a dark hole with spiders, is going to do so. Which is exactly what happened yesterday. She was voted to spend some quality time in an underground crate, chained to the floor with five padlocks in the company of some lovely rodents. She was going head to head with a former MP and Cheeky Girl romancer, Lembit Opik.

Having screamed at regular intervals at ordinary flies while being briefed about the task, Dear Gillian was locked into a crate and told to fumble around in the dark to find keys to the padlocks holding her in place thus freeing herself. She continued screaming and telling us she couldn't see anything (it was dark in there so, duh..)  and as soon as she heard the bell being rung to mark the victory of Lembit, she screamed even louder to be let out of the crate. Then she "fainted". While being "unconscious" she was given oxygen and carried to level ground where she managed to pull down her top to hide her control-panel undies while still supposedly out of it. Faking it.


More hilarity ensued when she returned to the girls' camp telling the tale of her loss, putting a lot of emphasis to the fact that she had fainted twice. I must've been to the loo when she passed out the second time. She is getting on everyone's nerves already and I, for one am loving and hating it in equal measures. I cannot wait for tonight when this vegan excrement-enthusiast will have to eat all sorts of maggots, insects and animal genitalia. I'm sure she'll go back to her camp telling her camp mates (a Bond girl, a Playmate, a WAG and an X-factor finalist) how she had to wrestle a crocodile to the ground and rip out it's testicles with her teeth. Now there's  a trial I'd watch over and over...