Beano in the bush is looming but count me out of the circus
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THIS week, it is my solemn duty to warn you that many people in Britain are about to enter a period of doom and gloom when it will seem as though there is no end to the horrors ahead.
During the coming weeks, some will even lose their comfortable homes, their pampered lifestyles, their sumptuous banquets, their designer clothes and, eventually, their last vestiges of dignity. Their worlds will be transformed from relative luxury to a subsistence existence.
While many find the whole thing repulsive, millions of others are drooling at the prospect of seeing some of the country’s big-shots being brought down a peg or two. There will be winners and losers, but, in a strange way, everyone involved will end up a winner.
You might think I am talking about the much-discussed recession that we now have as much chance of avoiding as Madonna does of reaching her silver wedding, but you’d be wrong. As I have said often, talk about recession constantly and it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. To those who do, I say shut it, now.
What we really need, in fact, is a decent royal wedding or an indecent royal affair to deflect everyone’s attention from the monetary melee. One regal romance and the recession will vanish. It worked in 1981 when the Charles and Diana bandwagon began to roll and again in 1992 when their bandwagon’s wheels fell off.
Unless Prince William marries Kate Middleton imminently or the Queen seduces Gordon Brown during one of their weekly get-togethers at the palace, however, the chances of the royals riding to our rescue this time are slim.
Still, I digress. What’s adding to my sense of gloom is that our lives will soon be dominated by that banal beano in the bush, I’m a Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here, which begins again in a fortnight. It’s that time when people you might recognise join others you have never heard of for three weeks of so-called reality TV in the Australian jungle. It makes spending an evening listening to a CD of Alistair Darling’s greatest speeches seem thrilling in comparison.
We shouldn’t complain, mind you. A couple of good points did stand out whenever Myleene Klaas or Gemma Atkinson took a shower or when Alex Best dooked her derriere in the river. It is not my idea of entertainment, though, to see Carol Thatcher doing what comes naturally beside her bed during the night, or to watch Tony Blackburn, Kerry Katona or Christopher Biggins do anything at all, ever.
I have no time for the show. Even its title, I’m a Celebrity, begs the question of just who qualifies for celebrity status. My dictionary says it is someone who has achieved fame or renown. Amazing how some well-upholstered women achieve fame without being renowned for anything other than their large treasure chests.
This isn’t just bile from a boring old buffer for whom fame and fortune is as unlikely as finding himself sharing an Orient Express sleeping berth with the Spice Girls. I honestly have no desire to be a celebrity.
Fortunately, I am never besieged by fans, thanks to the P&J’s subterfuge of using a digitally-altered photograph of me that is very different to the suave, sexy, sophisticated, slim, silken-haired Adonis that I am in real life.
To be fair, my pulse did speed once when a very pretty woman gave me a lingering look in an Inverness supermarket, but it turned out she was staring over my shoulder at a two-for-one offer on cheese. Perhaps she mistook me for a giant truckle of cheddar.
I could never be as publicity-hungry as former Atomic Kitten singer and I’m a Celebrity winner Kerry Katona, who appeared on ITV’s This Morning a few days ago. After a shambolic and embarrassing interview, it was said that medication she takes for bipolar disorder had left her temporarily disorientated and slurring her speech.
If so, why did she step into the studio knowing she wasn’t fit to do so? Does no one love her enough to stop her, or did the thought of her celebrity status fading faster than cheap curtains in the sunshine mean a prime-time TV appearance overruled commonsense?
Once celebrities have sampled fame, they can’t face that they might soon end up largely anonymous, just like the rest of us. Some will do anything to prop-up their plummeting profiles, even if it means eating maggots or showering publicly on TV.
I’ve no idea who is off to the TV jungle this year, nor do I care. It’s a fair bet, however, that those who do will have careers that are fading, books to sell, records to plug or particularly eye-catching curves to display.
Two thousand years ago, Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius said: “All is ephemeral – fame and the famous as well.”
Ephemeral means “lasts a short time”. Thank goodness the I’m a Celebrity circus is ephemeral, too.
Finally, to my heroes of the week and my thoughts were with Scotland’s lifeboat crews in recent days as they stood poised to launch to aid seafarers in distress during the atrocious weather. It is 150 years since the first Scottish RNLI lifeboat was launched, at Fraserburgh, and the charity has since been responsible for thousands of missions during which more than 12,000 lives have been saved.
To mark the anniversary, the RNLI is asking people to organise their own SOS-themed fundraising day on January 30 to help raise £1million.
It’s a great cause that I’m backing and you can, too. Call 0845 121 499 or click on www.rnli.org.uk/sos and you could help save a life, maybe even your own.
Those who volunteer to crew our lifeboats search for casualties, not for fame and fortune, much though they deserve it. They face real-life trials of survival at sea, not trumped-up trials of TV’s well-heeled jungle. They are personalities of real renown.
As for those over-exposed celebrity has-beens, just get them out of here, fast.
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