I’m (NOT) a celebrity
I’LL START this week on the TV front, where, sadly, Her Indoors has expressed an interest in following this year’s ‘I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here’ series, which is better known these days by the mercifully easier to say: ‘I’m A Celebrity’.
We haven’t actually watched any of the action yet, but, ominously two episodes are already queued up on the Sky box.
The perennial problem with the show of course – aside from the fact that it’s not in the jungle anymore due to covid – is the utter lack of actual celebrities; even people that you might vaguely be aware of.
Now if Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan, Ronaldo or Van Morrison were wolfing down insects while rats were nipping at their toenails, I’d be on board. But of course successful celebrities are much too busy doing the actual work that made them famous in the first place.
Which leaves us with a crop of up-and-coming wannabees and has-beens, including David Ginola, the ex-footballer who I absolutely DO know, as a football fan of a certain vintage. He was a class act actually, our Ginola, particularly in his Newcastle days.
Richard Madeley is another ‘celeb’ I know of this year – he of ‘Richard and Judy’ daytime TV fame. He’s not exactly an A-lister but truth be told, I always kinda liked ‘Richard’ for his disinterested ways and black humour. He never seemed to give a single hoot about the magazine-type stories that filled the show or the attention-seekers featured on it.
He has edginess too. Remember all that shoplifting stuff from the early nineties, when he was arrested for failing to pay for some items at a Tesco in Manchester? He was later acquitted of all charges. But all we could wonder at the time was: why would he need to be stealing anything on his money?
Also making Barrtalk’s cut of genuine celebrities [just about] is Simon Gregson, AKA Steve McDonald from Coronation Street. He’s the son of Jim McDonald, so he is, the one who always wears a worried frown on his ever-expanding face. Me, I always preferred his twin brother, Andy, who supported United but has since long gone from Weatherfield.
