I’m A Celebrity 2010: Episode 3 Recap by Bren

Absolutely no onions were harmed during the watching of this show.

Episode 3/Day 3

The show begins with the news that Camp Sheila is to be decommissioned and the prisoners occupants are to make the long journey to Camp Bruce.

Ant or Dec reinforce their continued gender stereotyping by taking the piss out of the girls only having half an hour to pack. Later they take the piss out of the girls by doing the ‘farting and snoring’ gag. Ah, predictability, thy name is Geordie Shor-tasses.

Meanwhile in Camp Bruce, Lembit is using the camp’s only knife to sharpen a stick. This is a great strategy, instead of having one really sharp thing and one really blunt thing, the camp will now have two really blunt things. This demonstrates the need to put political candidates through an intelligence test before they face the public vote. Which is kind of what we’re doing here.

Nigel is aghast that Lembit a) is an adult and b) was an MP for 13 years. News for you Nigel, you’re not alone in your aghastness.

I do worry about Nigel, he’s not coping with the calibre of mental stimulation the camp has to offer. I’m guessing that back in civvy street he spends much of his time reading and listening to music, because listening to people talk piles of shit clearly isn’t his forte.

His eyes take on the steely properties of a murderer as he mutters through clenched teeth, ‘I’m 59 and I don’t want to sit around talking absolute bollocks’.

Argos, surprisingly, comes up with the gem of an observation that when there is no external stimulation (TV, radio, newspapers, the Internet, Twitter –what? No Twitter?) most people feel a psychological pressure to communicate, and that’s where Nigel’s head is at. He didn’t quite use those words, but I have newfound respect for Aggros. Dammit.

Before we go to the current Bushtucker Challenge, Ant or Dec tell us that the lines are open for us to vote on who we don’t want to see doing the next one.

It is called The Australian Job and we are shown a clip which reveals a parody of the ‘teetering bus on the edge of the cliff’ scene from the climax of the classic British film The Italian Job (1969). I am actually disappointed that no-one said ‘Ang on lads, I’ve got an idea…’

Gillian, Nigel and Britt are already excluded from this challenge on medical grounds.

Right, back to the current Bushtucker Challenge: School Dinners.

Do you remember the plates of wrigglies and bugs we talked about last time? Do you remember that Shaun and Gillian have been voted to eat them? What you may not have known is that Gillian is a vegan. This raises the blindingly obvious question…’Why would you put yourself on this show if you were a vegan? No, seriously, why? Gillian’s defence is that she didn’t know what the show involved. Really? Wait. No, really?

In the Challenge Canteen, Shaun sits at the table and looks hungry. Gillian looks like she might be pooing herself. There was a joke there but I deleted it on the grounds of decency and, erm, taste.

The rules to this challenge are simple. Eat one course, gain one meal for your camp.

The first course is Queasy Cheesy Flan, which is made from the smelliest fruit on the planet. I’ve smelled it. Try to imagine the smell of fresh, warm vomit and you’re in the right ballpark. Shaun says it ‘tastes like horrible veggie shit’, as he tucks in. Gillian loves it. She takes her time over it because she’s connecting. It does taste like puke says Shaun. Gillian finishes hers, eventually.

The second course is called Spag Bol, but it’s a bull’s tongue and a plate of worms. Shaun’s straight in. ‘I’ve had worse’, he says, and then follows this up with ‘A mixture of tongue, dog-food and pork chop’. The guy is a legend. He swallows a couple of worms. ‘Oysters!’ he declares. Gillian declines everything.

The third course is amusing titled Smelly and Ice Cream; it consists of jelly, worms, crickets, cockroaches and a pair of crocodile eyes. Gillian refuses to look her crocodile eyes in the eye. Shaun’s straight in there and he’s soon scraping the bowl clean.

Next is a dish called Spotted Dick, except it is a crocodile’s penis. Do you remember the crocodile foot the boys won for their meal last night? Somewhere in the Aussie outback there’s a three-footed, emasculated crocodile who is pretty fucking annoyed! Gillian says there’s no way she’s going to eat a penis. ‘You’ve never eaten a penis then?’ Asks Shaun. ‘Don’t be disgusting’, she retorts, and follows that up with, ‘Have you ever eaten one before?’ ‘Lots of times!’ says Shaun. ‘That was a joke’, he added, after a respectable pause. ‘Tastes like tripe’, he says.

Shaun releases a manful belch as he’s collecting the fifth course which is Spoiled Egg and Soldiers. It’s an aged duck egg that’s been fermenting for a few weeks. Shaun prises open the shell and eats the egg. He doesn’t eat the soldiers though. Have we found his Achilles Heel? ‘Tastes like egg’, he says. Gillian doesn’t eat eggs.

The plates are cleared away by an unshaven thug who looks scarily like Sister Mary-Michael from my own school dinners days.

Gillian says the girls will be okay with the fact that she’s earned them just the one meal. Shaun says he’s full.

Surprisingly, Gillian is right, the girls do seem to be okay, on her return, when she announces that she has won them just one meal. The boys treat Shaun like the legend he clearly is.

Later in the day Britt and Nigel meet up in the jungle to play a mini-challenge, the TV producers try to create a smoochy atmosphere by playing elevator muzak over the soundtrack. Fuck me.

The challenge is called Bonkers and it’s yet another piece of retro ‘It’s A Knockout’-style fun. Or something loosely approximated to fun. It involves giant conkers that Britt and Nigel have to swing to bash another conker to release a key that will unlock a chest in which is kept all of the secrets of the world…

Sorry, I may have drifted off for a bit.

Nigel, who was the school conkers captain, wins this one.

To get serious for a moment, it’s really interesting watching how Nigel’s mental and physical attitudes change when he’s in the company of girls. Or, to put it another way, how he changes when he is not in the company of a bunch of lads. He actually started to soften around the edges, become less spiky and blossom a little when he was near Britt. I feel a degree of sympathy for him.

The lads get the chest back to camp, open it and reveal yet another ‘either/or’ quiz. Who has more braincells; men or women? They get it wrong (thereby proving their own argument) and as a reward they get an inflatable beach-ball and a child’s paddling pool. I bet there were smirks all round when the TV creatives came up with that.

‘I know Wupert, let’s put them in the middle of a jungle and give them some beach things!’

Stunning.

As the time nears for the camps to amalgamate, the talk in ‘Bruce’ – almost inevitably – turns to flights of fancy; girls in general and Kayla’s bum in particular. Linford reveals fantasies about the Athena poster. Shaun doesn’t want the girls, all he wants to do is sleep and eat. This Australian jaunt is clearly a package holiday for him.

The five meals that Shaun’s stomach so bravely won for the lads is ‘possum sausages’. The one meal that the girls get is possum sausages. Does anyone else feel that in getting just one meal, Gillian actually won this one?

As the boys sit around not digesting their possum, Lembit talks. And talks. And talks. And talks. The problem is, unfortunately, that all Lembit does is talking utter shite. He clearly has no boundaries and an almost total absence of social skills. Nigel gets upset by Lembit. There may be a Miss Marple-esque incident involving Lembit’s anus and a partially sharpened stick soon. We can only hope.

The girls arrive! Shaun manfully sleeps through it all, even the almost unveiling of Kayla’s cameltoe. Within half an hour of the coming together Ant or Dec turn up to reveal that Stacey will be facing the Australian Job challenge.

Away from the gaze and earshot of the good folk in the camp, three secrets are revealed to the viewers.

Firstly, two new slebs will be arriving tomorrow, but first – to prove their mettle – the new slebs will have to spend the night in a garden shed, before they are released to play beach-ball and paddling pool with the rest of the gang.

Secondly, owing to a previously unseen sporting commitment – ITV will be showing a netball game or something – we get a night off from IACGMOOH. Instead of beating my breast at the lack of Australian-based televisuality, I cry ‘Why doesn’t ITV have a standby channel for such eventualities? They could call it ITV2, or ITV3 or even ITV4!’.

Thirdly, I can reveal, exclusively to Shouting At Cows, that the new slebs are…

You heard it here first.

You can follow ‘I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here!’ on ITV but, let’s face it, you’d rather be reading about it here. And who can blame you.

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