I’m A Celeb’s Dean Gaffney has thrown up some interesting questions – like why?
JUST before regurgitating a blended cow’s vagina all over himself, a jungle veteran delivered one of television’s great curveballs in the South African bush, this week.
“I know who I was in 2006,” he said, so overcome with self-love he lapsed into the third person.
“But who is Dean Gaffney in 2023?”
Who indeed, Dean? It’s the question that bedevilled academics the world over, for decades.
According to the Internet Movie Database, Dean’s listed as “man in a pub”, during a 2017 Children In Need sketch, as well as a contestant on Celebrity Catchphrase (2019) and some sort of fly-by-night presence on a 2020 run of Celebs Go Dating.
For a whole new generation of light entertainment fans, though, “Robbie off EastEnders” could now be the bloke who spewed his load drinking the Helen Fanny-gan cocktail in Tuesday’s Flipping Disgusting entry trial, with Joe Swash.
Quivering sap
Against my own expectations, Dean may also be the best thing to have happened on I’m A Celebrity . . . South Africa, a series that, like The Masked Dancer, is another example of ITV overkill.
You take a much-loved network staple, I’m A Celeb.
Then, for want of ideas, you simply add a spin-off series, filled with jungle veterans doing the same old challenges.
So, by the end of the run, the laws of supply and demand have done nothing to help the new show, but they have chipped away at the popularity of the original, which now risks being less of an event and more of an ongoing process.
That said, ITV has not actually produced a bad line-up here, although there are probably only three contestants, Janice Dickinson, Shaun Ryder and Gillian McKeith, who would trouble my own Jungle Gold line-up.
Others, like Phil Tufnell, Paul Burrell, Toff and Gaffney, also bring with them either a degree of affection or a purpose that generally involves acting like a gigantic, quivering sap.
But the rest?
Well, they’re clearly here out of loneliness (Fatima Whitbread) or the desperate need for money and acclaim that can only be provided by a show where the public can’t get rid of them when they become too much of a needy bore.
There are also, however, a couple of them, including Mensa’s answer to Vicki Michelle, Carol Vorderman, who seem to be using the show as a way of establishing themselves as self-help gurus.
An unsettling process that involves talking about “important conversations”, “opening yourself up” and all the rest of the meaningless, insincere b*****ks that comes with this territory.
At the risk, though, of damning the series with even more faint praise, the opening week still managed to be adequately entertaining.
Tufnell and Ryder struck up an endearing friendship.
Vorderman told us, “I love Myleene (Klass),” before voting for Andy Whyment to join the camp ahead of her.
And Burrell obeyed the first rule of British comedy when he revealed Buckingham Palace security was so lax “I took dates in the tradesman’s entrance”. Something I’d never doubted.
It was still impossible, though, to avoid the nagging sense something was missing from the show, beyond the spontaneity and atmosphere that comes with the live Australian version.
Then, out of nowhere, on Friday, ITV contrived a way of eliminating Shaun Ryder from the series.
In one last heroic act of sabotage, he took Gillian McKeith with him as well.
But it was only at this point I realised the missing ingredient was the public, who would never have voted for this exit.
It’s not helped, of course, by the fact that since the South Africa run was pre-recorded, I’m A Celeb has enjoyed one of its greatest ever runs with Matt Hancock, the Bronze Bronco.
The genius of that series was that, insufferable, ego-driven and slippery as the MP was, the public quickly realised others, like Chris Moyles and Boy George, were much much worse.
So they voted them out before him, prompting my favourite-ever jungle bleat from Moyles: “I’m gutted Matt Hancock is more popular than me. What the bejaysus is going on?”
I’m A Celeb . . . South Africa is lucky it can still rely on the hosting genius of Ant & Dec, but weighted against the unpredictable thrill, excitement and justice of live and original television, the only other things it’s now got are Dean Gaffney and a cow’s vagina.
Good luck with that one, boys.
Unexpected morons in the bagging area
WEAKEST Link, Romesh Ranganathan: “Which large bird of prey follows Leighton in the name of a market town in Bedfordshire?”
Pamela Cookey: “Eagle.”
Romesh: “What G, derived from an Icelandic word, is a natural spring that intermittently spouts jets of steam and hot water?”
Carlton Cole: “Kettle.”
Romesh: “Which former member of The Beatles was a headlining act at Glastonbury in 2022?”
Liv Cooke: “Queen.”
The Chase, Bradley Walsh: “Waltzing Matilda is considered the unofficial national anthem of which country?”
Helen: “Germany.”
Random TV irritations
THE dementedly woke Football Focus somehow turning Newcastle’s push for Champions League football into a segment on food banks.
Lisa Theaker and her Celebrity Hunted team celebrating the capture of Bobby Seagull like they’d cornered El Chapo.
Any EastEnders scene that requires Gillian “Kathy” Taylforth to act drunk (make it stop).
Bafta giving lousy historian David Olusoga an outstanding contribution award without most viewers being able to name two of his shows.
And Ruby Wax issuing a chilling warning via her C5 Cast Away show: “I always say I could’ve been a serial killer or a comedian.”
Chamber of Horrors, here she comes.
FRANKIE SAYS . . RUBBISH
ON a Sunday night C4 documentary called Farewell To The Monarchy, Frankie Boyle castigated the Royal Family for its “unshakeable misogyny”.
The same Frankie Boyle who marked the 2012 Olympics with “jokes” about raping Victoria Pendleton and punching Jessica Ennis-Hill in the stomach to abort a baby.
Material that would’ve ended other comedians’ careers.
TV knows, though, that Frankie’s drunk the Kool-Aid since then and will now swallow any old woke cobblers, including Emma Dabiri’s insane suggestion that: “Elizabeth I and Francis Drake set the wheels in motion for, kind of, the invention of race.”
In the sense that they, kind of, didn’t at all, you race-baiting chancer.
Other fanciful ideas bandied about here by Frankie included the myth that “the Royal Family are the world’s largest landowners with 6.6million acres”, which is about the size of a window box in the world of Australia’s Gina Rinehart, who owns 12million hectares.
Quite apart from the factual errors, though, the thing that got me about FTTM was its endless wise-after-the-event sermonising and empire tutting.
A cynical process that’s so easy to pull off I’d normally consider sparing the blushes of the BBC presenter who, in a 2018 Russian travelogue, suggested Britain “may be responsible” for the Salisbury poisonings and performed his own pro-Moscow rap: “We supply Putin with Reaper.
“We turn you on like Bathsheba. And cut you off like Crimea.”
But seeing as the cowardly, gullible hypocrite responsible was Frankie Boyle, I’ll make an exception.
TELLY quiz. On Sunday night, what did presenter Tom Allen say he was hoping to do by “blowing sugar successfully”?
A) Impress Prue Leith and Paul Hollywood on The Great British Bake Off For Stand Up To Cancer?
B) Win a new contract from the boss on The Apprentice: You’re Fired?
Lookalike of the week
THIS week’s winner is Carol Vorderman, during I’m A Celeb’s Tanks Of Torment challenge, and the great Anna “Olive” Karen from On The Buses. Sent in by Neil Craig.
Great sporting insights
BILL LESLIE: “As the old saying goes, ‘to lose one game 5-1 is careless but to lose two is deeply damaging for Leeds United’.”
Patrick Davison: “It’s a one-off that’s happened twice in a week.”
Gareth Ainsworth: “Today it’s not we, it’s them. Because we’ve turned this around.”
(Compiled by Graham Wray)
TV GOLD
THE extraordinary end to hostage Mike Thexton’s story on Sky Showcase’s brilliant Hijacked: Flight 73.
C5’s admirable Dark Water: The Murder Of Shani Warren investigation.
TalkTV’s Arthur: A Life With The Royal Family, featuring colleague, legend and dear friend Arthur Edwards.
Lee Mack’s 1% Club climaxing with a £99,000 win and a burst of the Cheeky Girls dance from an inspired contestant called Daniel.
And BBC One’s procedural masterpiece Blue Lights, which might have killed off its best character, Gerry Cliff, but has established itself as a fixture with a simple combination of superb writing and acting, while keeping woke intrusions to a bare minimum.
Not really that hard, is it, Auntie?
ATTEMPTING to sum up all the corruption, financial excess and state-sponsored hype that comes with this event, EastEnders’ gay, vegetarian drag queen Felix said on Tuesday: “Not long now until the celebration of imperialist domination of a third of the world.”
I’m with you, comrade.
Bloody Eurovision . . .
INCIDENTALLY, among all the other factual errors on Frankie Boyle’s Farewell To The Monarchy, a contributor called Kojo Karam claimed: “The three leading tax havens in the world are British overseas territories and crown dependencies,” which would only be true if, since Sunday morning, we’ve invaded, occupied and colonised Luxembourg.
As of lunchtime May 4, we haven’t.
GREAT TV lies and delusions of the week
Celebrity Hunted, Lisa Theaker: “There were points when James Acaster was mildly amusing.”
Scared Of The Dark, Donna Preston: “We’re all winners, do you know what I mean?” Nope.
And Cast Away: Ruby Wax, survival expert Kevin Newton: “Not only do the clothes need to go, I think the make-up needs to go as well, Ruby.”
Click.