There is no country other than Britain where Gemma Collins could have happened, and for that reason alone we should embrace her. Collins – for those who have not read her essential tome Basically … My Life as a Real Essex Girl – is a reality-TV mainstay. The book is chapter after chapter detailing all the wordless older men she has variously been romantically involved with and how many of whom were arrested, intercut with vivid retellings of every stage school appearance she made between the ages of 11 and 17.
She is safe only in her home on ITVBe, in the warm embrace of Towie, sipping cocktails with gay BFFs and occasionally swirling wine at bastards while shouting, “Don’t mug me off!”
Attempts to pull Collins, kicking and screaming, into other reality realms have always ended badly: her appearance on ITV’s Splash resulted in one of the most medically unviable tit bruises ever seen on a living human; an attempt at the I’m a Celebrity … jungle ended after three days; her Celebrity Big Brother appearance resulted in a live eviction to a chorus of boos. What must Collins do to find a home away from Towie?
I would like to humbly suggest her new gig might be explaining the news on Sky to Kay Burley. This week, Collins appeared in a now-iconic two-minute segment as a dissenting voice to the ever-rumbling Essex Girls dictionary story, uttering immortal line after immortal line and seemingly painting a picture of a deep and brutal war between dictionaries and Essex girls.
“The dictionary should be paying everyone in Essex some compensation,” Collins suggested, vastly overestimating the income stream of actual print dictionaries in this, the year of our Lord 2016. She went on to add: “I’m a massive fan of the dictionary.” What I would give to see her on Countdown, propping up Dictionary Corner and occasionally throwing to the adverts with a rambling anecdote about how Arg is never going to get this candy. What I would give.
