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Sleb Safari: I'm A Celebrity is ripe for smuggled Mars bars

Maeve Connoly

Maeve Connolly

Maeve is the deputy digital editor at The Irish News. She has worked for the company since 2000.

The I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here 2020 crew. Picture from ITV
The I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here 2020 crew. Picture from ITV The I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here 2020 crew. Picture from ITV

DESPITE Sleb Safari’s long and intensive campaigning on behalf of Carrickfergus Castle, I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here began last night in Gwrych Castle in Wales.

Sleb Safari felt strongly that its 250-slide PowerPoint presentation offered overwhelming evidence in favour of Carrickfergus Castle but disappointingly the myopic I’m A Celebrity team plumped for Gwrych Castle.

Sleb Safari had also proposed Kris Jenner, Eamonn Holmes, Megan Thee Stallion, Gregg Wallace, Katie Taylor, Jane McDonald, Marvin Humes, Ruth Jones, Oti Mabuse, Nico Simeone, Liam Payne and Mehreen Baig as this year’s contestants and was dealt a second blow when the I’m A Celebrity team ignored that email (plus the subsequent follow-up emails?) and chose an entirely different troop.

This year’s crew are an interesting mix. Mo Farrah is in there, along with Victoria Derbyshire, Shane Richie, Hollie Arnold, Beverley Callard, AJ Pritchard, Giovanna Fletcher, Vernon Kay, Jordan North and Jessica Plummer.

Sleb Safari’s money is on Victoria Derbyshire to be crowned queen of the jungle/queen of the castle 2020.

Paralympian Hollie Arnold is a contender too. Sports people are always competitive, strong minded and resilient. Sleb Safari suspects Strictly’s AJ has been tasked with turning them all into dancers while keeping hypothermia at bay. He’ll be hoping to win after burning his Strictly bridges with his pointed description of I’m A Celebrity as “an even better show”.

“Doing I’m A Celebrity is a childhood dream come true, I was so excited to watch the return of Strictly this autumn but now I am going to be on an even better show. I can’t wait.”

Former rugby player James Haskell was in the jungle last year. He’s a big brute of a bloke and was famished for most of the three weeks. And now he’s chosen to tell the story of how he tried to bribe a member of the crew to bring him a Mars bar. He told SPORTBible's The Social that he said to the man: "I'll give you 500 quid when we get out of here if you get me a Mars bar."

The crew member replied: "I've had bigger offers than that. I've had propositions." Can we find this man immediately please? This is the I’m A Celebrity story that needs to be told.

Back to James. "You don't get any more food than them two little sachets of rice and beans and I put them into My FitnessPal app which tells you how many calories.

"89 calories I was eating from seven o'clock in the morning to eight o'clock at night. You put cooking oil in, a hundred calories. So, to say I was on edge." Sleb Safari will finish that sentence for James “...was a humdinger of an understatement”.

There’s so much more scope for smuggling this year, what with all the extra layers of clothing. If the campmates haven’t managed to conceal handfuls of fun sized Mars bars about their person then Sleb Safari despairs of each and every one of them.

Read more:I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here launch night live

High Five Stephen from Gogglebox

Gogglebox's Stephen Webb and husband Daniel Lustig
Gogglebox's Stephen Webb and husband Daniel Lustig Gogglebox's Stephen Webb and husband Daniel Lustig

THIS week Sleb Safari tips its hat to Stephen Webb from Gogglebox.

Stephen was chatting to Heat magazine and the interview was running its course until he was asked ‘What’s the most surprising thing you’ve ever done?’

Stephen replied: “People always seem surprised when I tell them that I once trekked solo to Everest Base Camp.

“I got a flight to Lukla, which is the last place you can fly to in the Himalayas. I thought ‘I’ll just land there and get a cab’ but of course there are no cabs so I started walking.

“On the first day I walked for about eight hours. It took me about two weeks to get up, and out, four days to get back down.

“Every so often you come across graves, where people have got altitude sickness and died. I went with a little backpack with a sleeping bag and 12 tins of tuna in it.”

And then Stephen’s husband added: “He didn’t have any gear. So basically he went in a pair of trainers. He just had a Walkman and a pack of fags.”

What an image. High five Stephen.

Begorrah It's Wild Mountain Thyme

WE must address with some urgency the matter of Wild Mountain Thyme, a new film set in Oireland, begorrah.

If you managed to make it the entire way through the film trailer Sleb Safari applauds you. The accents. The impossible-to-pin-down decade in which it’s supposedly set. The accents – so cringeworthy they’re worth mentioning twice.

The Irish Embassy in Washington DC was characteristically diplomatic in its response.

“To be fair, Irish accents are hard (we struggle with them at times). But otherwise #WildMountainThyme looks great,” it tweeted.

“And, in Jamie Dornan and Emily Blunt, presents a remarkably realistic depiction, visually at least, of the average Irish man & woman. Truly, we are a beautiful people.”

Yeah… we’re not THAT beautiful.

Dublin Airport dispensed with tact.

“There’s fashion police

“Grammar police

“We even have airport police

“Is there such a thing as accent police?

“If so, somebody better call ‘em.

“On the upside, Ireland looks nice.”

Oh, Wild Mountain Thyme why must you be so questionable? Is this how the French felt when they saw Emily in Paris?

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