Celebrating Celebrity

I have a nagging feeling that I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here! is, along with Steptoe & Son and Only Fools And Horses, a television programme that should be sealed in a timeproof container and buried under the top-soil of a distant planet just in case any alien lifeforms really want to know what British people are like.

This, by the way, is a compliment. Harold Steptoe and Del Boy are fabulously postcolonial figures. They know that we used to rule a generous half of the known world, but they just didn't learn any lessons from that fact.

We really should be used to the jungle by now, particularly that bit of it that grows in Queensland, which is named after one of our old ruling biddies. We British became great by, among other achievements, demystifying jungles. Except that we have chosen to forget. As Groucho Marx once quipped, those who forget the lessons of history are condemned to repeat them as farcical game shows.

Which is why a bunch of not entirely unattractive characters are having a bit of a panic attack at being confronted by ferns and suchlike.

The last series of Get Me Out Of Here was effective television because the people behind it managed to round up a bunch of stray personalities whom we all thought we'd forgotten about, and then remembered why we wanted them to go abroad and stay there.

This time, we have a more interesting cast. Antony Worrall Thompson, for example, is a chef who would not recognise an insect unless it was covered in high-quality plain chocolate.

Sian Lloyd knows her extremes of temperature, but prefers to find them on a hi-tech blackboard in the form of small pictures. The jungle that the freshly-retired Middlesex and England off-spinner Phil Tufnell knows best is to be found near the boundary rope.

And then we have John Fashanu, otherwise known as Fash the Bash, on account of his habit of bumping into things at high speed. Fash, it is sad to report, has been rumbled in the jungle. He is persuaded to slip into a peculiarly capacious and transparent undergarment which is then filled with small crayfish, cockroaches, stick insects and other wriggling and lively stuff. After seven sorts of wildlife have been introduced to his nether regions, Fash calls a halt when the rats are introduced. And who can blame him?

I suspect that it was not the rats that caused Fash to call time on the fun and games, but the fact that Ant and Dec were involved. I would be fascinated to hear why these two are on television all the time, but I know I would not understand the reasoning. It is true, however, that they are the perfect presenters for this particular brand of tosh. Like the rest of the people who have decided to overlook the woods in favour of the fees, they are hilariously out of place in what these days passes for the wild.

Tuffers declares that he would like to be provided with an inflatable woman, while the real women express a fondness for soft toys. If and when Fash clears the worms from his underwear, we shall doubtless get another take on what makes paradise perfect.

The point is that Get Me Out Of Here is a witty take on modern culture.

Everyone knows what the deal is. In the jungle, life is reduced to the basics. Nobody has to pretend to have ever read a book, because raw nature despises anyone who wears smarty-pants. Under the tropical ferns, everyone is equal. My only regret is that Mae West is not around to join in the fun.

There are so many snake jokes going begging, and she would know just how to phrase it.