David Gest's bath gets dangerously close to overflowing. Photograph: PA
Thank God for Dean Gaffney! Now how often do you hear that? But I can't have been the only one gradually tuning out from I'm a Celebrity once it became clear that David Gest wasn't, in fact, as mad as his weird melt-y face would suggest but quite a fun straightforward guy ("hey, weren't you guys at my wedding?" he asked the first crocs thrown at him in his bushtucker trial), or, at least, a fun straightforward guy with a hideously twisted dark side kept extremely firmly under lock and key for as long as the cameras are on him.
And really, how is Lauren Booth a 'political correspondent' exactly? Okay, well my sister-in-law is a tax lawyer, so I'll be perfectly happy and qualified to look over and comment on your business accounts, okay?
And of course, the weepy five times married Jan Leeming. Do you think there's a point - at around, say, number four- that you sit up and think, 'hey... maybe it's me'? Do you invite the same people every time or do you just have to dump all your friends and ask the people you met on holiday? I'm just fascinated by the logistics of it all. When the vicar asks if you take this man, does a thought go through your head like, 'well, you know... I suppose...Kind of.'
The problem with I'm A Celeb is that we've been there, done it. Weirdly, although you'd expect this to happen with Big Brother, repeatedly throwing people into a tiny house with nothing to do is often fascinating and always unpredictable (remember that year with Cameron from the Orkney Isles, where they all got on great and sat around cooking and being nice to each other? No, me neither).
Whereas with I'm a Celeb it's snake, bug, yelp, snake, bug, yelp and that's pretty much it. Frankly I think ITV should show a highlights show which is just Ant and Dec's funny bits and about ten minutes long, then we'll just fill in the rest for ourselves.
After all there's always a crier, a couple of blokes who just have a laugh and the older ones who drink too much and usually win. There's very little they could have done to compete with the coup that was last years' Celeb BB triumvirate of Michael Barrymore, Pete Burns and George Galloway.
Although my favourite ever IACGMOOH story is Radio 1 DJ Mike Read a couple of years ago, who spent the entire week rehearsing and directing an entire version of Oliver! - the whole thing! As the celebs practiced their roles day and night, before auditioning loudly for the cameras, they'd no idea that ITV didn't bother clearing the rights, and not a single note could ever be broadcast. And Mike Read was voted out first. Genius.
But Dean is brilliant. Just off the plane he was thrown headfirst into a bushtucker trial. He screamed, he wheezed, he vomited, he's still getting trauma counselling in the bush telegraph - oh, I'm back in.
