One episode in of I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! and already Ruby Wax has attracted enough heat online to make the jungle seem positively chilled. The 72-year-old comedian made headlines after slamming her pre-camp hotel, calling it “trash” and demanding a room change. But it was her on screen attitude that drew viewer’s ire.
Telling AngryGinge he was ‘standing in her light’ as the second five waited for their ride, demanding poor old Lisa Riley’s undivided attention and seeming to play dead in her first trail gave her the diva stamp that had commenters fuming.
“She hasn’t got a hope of winning this show,” said one. “Voting Ruby for the 1st trial 100%” said another. “Ruby is gonna be doing all of the trials for the first 5-6 days! Insufferable American showbizzer!” and another wrote: “Ruby Wax is gonna be the next Lady C, I’m calling it now.”
Sadly, there’s a rule change this year that prevents constant trials – anyone picked for two in a row gets a break for the third. Otherwise, Ruby would soon find out there are far worse things than getting kicked off Donald Trump’s plane or meeting OJ Simpson. She was name dropping like crazy to remind everyone she’d been big in the ’80s – another rookie mistake.
Sure enough, she was picked in for the first Bushtucker debut with AngryGinge, who lost the crowd when he started griping about Jack’s skill as the only campmate to know how to light a fire.
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“But he’s blowing on it! He’s going to blow it out,” he complained as Aitch tried to school him on firelighting for beginners.
This year, ITV is trying to raise the stakes with helicopters dropping Aitch, Kelly Brook, Eddie Kadi, Shona McGarty and Martin Kemp on the beach by parachute – a brilliant opener but it set the skydivers up as a bonded group immediately.
Compare that to Ruby, Lisa, Angry Ginge – answering to Morgan Burtwistle – Alex Scott and Jack Osbourne’s awkward handshaking by the pool, which did not do them any favours in the team-spirit stakes.
Winning the instant trials for keys to the VIP arrival experience seemed to mark out Aitch, Eddie, Jack and Ginge as the show’s anarchic bro team. Lighting the fire in camp saved Jack from winning the most boring campmate of all time after he struggled to make conversation and even stayed silent in the getaway car as Eddie and Aitch struck up the show’s opening anthem on their cruise to camp. “Aitch and Eddie in the jungle, Ginge and Jack in the jungle,” they hollered, sipping cocktails. The chaos crew are here. And Jack.
Meanwhile the first trial losers faced a world of pain in the Cockivan – cocki for giant cockroach – in stinking surroundings with showers of insects raining down during a second trial to earn their dinner that night.
This marked Martin as the ice-cool camper, hooting with laughter while everyone else screamed. It also set up two of the best lines in the show – Kelly wailing “they’re biting me tits!” and Ruby almost clawing her reputation back with “Every crevice has been filled.” She also showed surprising calm under cockroach pressure, so may be able to turn the hate around in the days to come.
Episode one flew past – the intros and the drives to camp chewed up valuable ‘getting to hate each other’ time for the celebrities, so the real drama starts tomorrow. Perhaps ITV should learn from Celebrity Traitors – everyone wants the tension between contestants, not the big set pieces, however entertaining producers imagine they’ll be…
I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! airs on ITV1 and ITVX daily at 9pm
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