Rotten entertainment (From Stroud News and Journal)

Rotten entertainment

TODAY is just the second of my IACGMOOH-deprived days and I am coping very well I feel.

I haven't broken out in a cold sweat, I haven't felt the need to phone the Samaritans and I haven't taken to eating mountains of chocolate biscuits for substitute satisfaction.

But, oh, I do miss them: Jenny and Johnny, Kerry and Kate, Peter and Alex, Charlie and Razor, even Diane and Mike.

You know what I am talking about, of course - the most compulsive television series to have hit our screens since The Good Life or possibly even the Forsythe Saga (not that I am old enough to remember that really).

So what was the magic ingredient that this series of I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here had that other programmes, reality or fabrication, lack?

It wasn't the smouldering romance between Peter and Jordan, nor Johnny's manic moods, nor Lord B's glued-on grin, nor Jenny's dramatic descent from icily rigid royal correspondent to bedraggled bushwacker, inanely humming in a rat-infested coffin.

No, what did it for me, and I suspect the rest of the nation, was the innate good nature of the contestants, and, with the exception of Jordan and Lord B towards the end, the way they became kinder and more compassionate as the days went by and genuinely seemed to enjoy each other's company.

And it was tremendously heartening. Here was a bunch of people with only celebrity in common doing their very best to rub along together, to keep the camp fire burning, the water boiled and food in the pot, and the viewing figures were mammoth.

There were almost no arguments and those contestants who did resort to backbiting or underhand behaviour were quickly voted off by a discerning public.

I could be wrong but it seems to me that programme makers should take note and that a little less sex, swearing and violence might make for bigger audiences.