I guess what I’ve learnt is lots of us (me included) try to change the things that make us, well, us. But we shouldn’t, we should just embrace it. It is crazy that I have only just realised that as I’ve got older, even though I read these words as a young child so many times:
‘Today you are you, that is truer than true.
There is no one alive who is you’er than you.’
I have a lot to thank Dr Seuss for.
Chapter Fifteen
I’M NOT QUITE A CELEBRITY… GET ME OUT OF HERE!
All the camp-mates during their time in the jungle are allowed to choose one luxury item – which they may or may not receive at some point in camp. For my luxury item, I chose ‘a bottle of fake tan and a tanning mitt’. (Funnily enough, I didn’t need it.)
It had been claimed that Danny Baker was responsible for Bob Marley’s death after treading on his foot during a charity football match in London in 1977. However, although Marley injured his foot in the game and cancer developed in his feet afterwards, Baker never played in the game. He believes the rumour started from a joke on his radio show.
Before Larry Lamb’s acting career took off, his job was to sell encyclopaedias to American soldiers in Germany.
After I had been introduced on the show, I was feeling all sentimental and honoured to be stood there with my fellow camp mates and of course Ant and Dec. I was just so thankful that all of my camp mates looked friendly and happy. The year before they had had such a hard time with Lady C, and I didn’t want to go through that sort of thing.
It was actually quite funny – when we were in the jungle, we didn’t know that Larry Lamb used to date Lady C. One night when we were sat round the camp fire, perched uncomfortably on a wooden log, I was chatting away about her. I was saying, ‘I’m pleased she isn’t in the jungle with us. I’m glad that we haven’t got any characters like her.’
Then Larry told me, ‘Oh, I used to date her.’
‘Oh my God, I’m so sorry, Larry. You should have spoken up sooner.’ I was desperately trying to backtrack, saying, ‘I’m sure she is lovely, she just didn’t like any of the trials.’ But we had literally all sat there and slagged his sweetheart off for about half an hour. He’s still friends with her, so that was a very awkward moment.
Speaking of Larry, my bloody entrance into the camp. What was all that about? If you haven’t seen it (please don’t YouTube it), it was probably the most embarrassing moment of my life. In my head, I thought that I was going to enter the camp like some sort of Bond girl. I’d be really cool in some sort of jumpsuit, leaping from a helicopter. Instead I was sat in a canoe. Now I don’t like any sort of water sports and canoeing is something I have never ever done properly and I don’t want to do it again either. When I’m in a restaurant, along with the actual money tip I always give a life tip: ‘Don’t stand up in a canoe.’
I am there in the torrential rain, my pretend silk (pilk) white dress is now see-through so it is revealing my Bridget Jones pants, my fake tan has now run all down my legs, my hair is stuck to my head and my eyelashes look like spiders’ legs. I have got loads of soggy sachets of salt in my bra that I’d taken from a café and was trying to sneak in there. I have a leech on my right arse cheek and my canoeing skills are as much use as a one-legged man in an arse-kicking competition.
‘This is not how I imagined my entrance to the jungle would be, Larry.’
He couldn’t hear me at all. We had to find a little island with two flags, one for me and one for Larry and put our flag in the flagpole back on land on the other side of the lake.
‘Have you found the flag, Larry?’ I shouted.
‘Yes, it’s getting out lovely now the rain has stopped.’
After canoeing for about seventy minutes I finally found the flag. Now bearing in mind I couldn’t even see the cameras at this point I genuinely thought something bad had happened to Larry. I could see a capsized canoe and my flag and that was about it. ‘I can see the canoe, but I can’t see you! Larry, are you OK?’
‘Yes I’m fine. What you need to do is pull out the flag using the key in your canoe. But be careful, the water’s freezing and the canoe will capsize when you take the key out.’
Now another little fact about me: I can’t swim very well. I managed to get the very heavy flag but I couldn’t swim with it at all. I just lay there floating like a rotten log in the lake. ‘I’ll come and get you,’ Larry exclaimed. (Cue Superman music.) And save me he did. Honestly, you wouldn’t believe Larry is seventy years old; the man is as fit as a fiddle. But as grateful as I was to Larry, it just wasn’t the entrance I’d imagined I was going to have.
One of the first things my
