lowculture.co.uk

Friday, November 30, 2007

Jungle Boogie

DRAMA! I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! ITV1, 9pm.

So we reach the finale of the ITV celeb-fest. Despite having one of the best line-ups in years, we haven't seen much of this, mainly because it clashes with other things we prefer.

We do hope that, if nothing else, it relaunches Cerys Matthews' solo career (and inspires her to make something a bit better than Never Said Goodbye), and in the meantime we'll settle for a rerelease of Catatonia's Greatest Hits, which doesn't have one dud moment.

However, the person likely to benefit the most from this experience is our first finalist, Christopher Biggins. Or 'Biggins' as he is apparently known these days, a shtick that is as annoying as the voiceovers on 'Badger or Bust' always calling Ruth Badger 'The Badger'.

Biggins has seemingly aged very little since the 80s (although maybe then he had oldface like Ziggy and Brian off BB, Katie Hopkins, CJ from Eggheads and Rob the Builder off Joseph, and he has simply grown into it), and lost weight. And his trademark specs, which is a shame. But nonetheless, he is one of two people in this show everyone is talking about, and with his playing as a chatshow host last night, who'd bet against him taking over from Parky?

Our second finalist is just as talked about as Biggins. When we heard Janice Dickinson was going in, we knew she'd be entertainment gold. ALthough we did tire very quickly of her saying 'Oh man' every five seconds. Rude, brash, funny, snidey - she has been perfect casting, and has been this year's 'public victim' for Bushtucker Trials. But there's no way she will win.

In fact, whilst the final should clearly be about Janice and Christopher/Biggins, we have a sneaky suspicion the rank outsider may clinch it. J from Five hasn't done an awful lot, but he does look better than he did in his youth (again, he's grown into his oldface a bit), and ex-boy banders always do well at this kind of thing.

So, who will join Joe Pasquale on the road back to obscurity? Who will have a starring guest role in next year's Iceland ads? Who will publish a not-very-sensational autobiography? Time for yuo to pick up that phone (and not be scammed by ITV, at all, oh no, they would never do that).

Labels: Christopher Biggins, I'm a Celebrity, ITV1, Janice Dickinson

By Rad :: Post link :: ::
1 pop-up comments :: Discuss on messageboard

Monday, November 12, 2007

It's a Jungle Out There

LADY DICK! I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here, ITV1, 9pm

It’s that time of year again, when a handful of people you’ve never heard of (and one or two you have) venture into the Aussie outback to eat bugs and suchlike. A ‘ratings winner’ on the beleaguered ITV network (we love calling it that), we can’t say this show is a true LC favourite (The thread for the last three series combined has only 3 pages in – compared to Any Dream Will Do’s 35, and X Factor series 4’s 44).

However, although we don’t usually make the effort with this one, we offer three reasons why this year’s may be more entertaining than most:

Cerys Matthews! Whose entry has made shock waves ripple through the messageboard. (Well, a few people were a bit disappointed she lowered herself to this), but who sould be entertaining and by virtue of Catatonia’s back catalogue alone, deserves to be Queen of the Jungle. With a new Welsh-lanugage album out, it’s clear she’s courting the Welsh market – and as we all know from BB, The X Factor and Strictly, regional goes down well…

Janice Dickinson! The star of America’s Top Model and (alleged) lover of plastic surgery should prove the most entertaining jungle star yet. If you haven’t seen her antics on ANTM, or that show she did with Abbey Clancy, you may have caught her mad romp on Jonathan Ross where she flirted shamelessly with Andrew Lloyd Webber (and decided she could marry him and become ‘Lady Dick’), pwned John Barrowman and talked about how ‘any hole will do’. In short, a wild, unpredictable bag of filfth.

Katie Hopkins! Well, perhaps. Tabloid rumours suggested the cold blooded killer from The Apprentice was going in. The official line-up doesn’t include her in it, but apparently she is in Australia right now. We can but hope. Janice vs Katie would make even the most bug-squeamish of us tune in.

Your other jungle-ites are: Gemma Atkinson (famous for Hollyoaks, Hollyoaks In the City, Hollyoaks LetLoose and taking her clothes off a lot), Marc Bannerman (Gianni Di Marco from EastEnders, famous for going out with Nadia Sawhalha. Presumably they are no longer an item, but if anyone knows, we’d love you to confirm), John Burton Race (the most wankerish of all the celebrity chefs who sullied the reputation of Dame Angela Hartnett, kitchen goddess, by appearing with her in the admittedly rubbish Kitchen Criminals), Lynne Franks (famous PR lady), Rodney Marsh (something in sport), Anna Ryder Richardson (the one off Changing Rooms who always used Barbie pink in every room she did) and ‘J’ from Five (the sort-of-fit-sort-of-ugly one with the buff body who looked about ten years older than the others). Malcolm McLaren has already walked out, the big wuss.

We can’t promise it’ll be the most entertaining ‘reality’ show of the year… but it’ll surely be better viewing than this year’s Celeb BB was….

Labels: Bugs Janice Dickinson, Cerys Matthews, I'm a Celebrity, reality TV

By Rad :: Post link :: ::
0 pop-up comments :: Discuss on messageboard