Gordon In The Morning: ITV attempt to cross-breed franchises

Talking of the I'm A Celebrity juggernaut, surely the luckiest recipient of a slot on that programme must be Peter Andre? Before, he was a failed pop star with nothing of value to offer the world; ever since, he's been able to charge for being a failed pop star with nothing of value to offer the world.

According to Gordon this morning, he's dating Alexandra Burke. Or, as they're saying in the ITV press office, attempting to pull down synergy between The X Factor and The ITV2 Reality Circus.

Gordon insists Andre is "smitten". Although if he's been wandering about in a daydream with a silly simper on his face, it's hard to see how you could tell the difference from his normal demeanour.

Andre is plannning to cook for Burke:

Pete told a friend: "I think she's really cool. She's seriously hot and once I've cooked for her, she won't be able to resist."

Let's hope Pete's comfort with something being cool and hot simultaneously doesn't influence the way he cooks the fish fingers, then.

If you're in any doubt at all that this is just a publicity-churning piece of cynicism, wait until you get to the end:

The pair have even discussed recording a track together.

A pal of Pete's told The Sun: "Alex was the one who broke the ice first. She was really complimentary about Pete's album."

How? How can anyone seriously be complimentary about Pete's album? "The download time didn't look as if it'd be too heavy"? "They haven't chosen a picture of you and Jordan for the sleeve, which is classy"? "

ITV announce spot-the-celebrity cast

The people who are going on the next series of I'm A Celebrity Although Not So Much That I Can Turn Down Stuff Like This have been announced. It's very, very light on pop stars this time round - there's no "really?" moment like when Cerys was on the list. Indeed, music's end this time is being represented by Sam Fox (she's a bit better-known in some places on the globe for her music than her ability to not wear a shirt) and Sabrina Washington. Yes you do; one of the other ones from Mis-Teeq.

Fox is on the way down - she once had a pointless reality show all of her own - while Washington is on the way up, having previously done Celebrity Scissorhands, the BBC Three programme where celebrities tried to stop Steve Strange from cutting people's hair.

The list in full:

The eleven celebrities heading into the jungle for series nine are: Lucy Benjamin, Gino D’Acampo, Camilla Dallerup, Sam Fox, George Hamilton, Stuart Manning, Colin McAllister, Justin Ryan, Sabrina Washington, Jimmy White and Kim Woodburn.

ITV own your brains

Some somewhat alarming news for the celebrities - and David Van Day and Timmy Mallet - down in the wilds of ITV. Cerys Matthews is suggesting they check their contracts:

"Anything written in the jungle belongs to ITV. It's in the contract," she told ITV2's I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here Now. "David and Timmy think it could be a Christmas Number One but the money will go to ITV."

Presumably this is a little snare that ITV added in after Insania; but it makes you wonder who would be so foolish as to sign a contract which would strip away their rights like that? I'm A Celebrity With A Rotten Agent Get Me Out Of Here...

Never said goodbye

This morning's Times a wide-ranging interview with Cerys Matthews this morning, which is not only the first proper one she's done since I'm A Celebrity. Interviews which require posing like you're in an Ethel Austin catalogue don't count; anything where Marc Bannerman is present is acting, and before she did IACGMOH, there was much being left unsaid.

Not now, though. Now, she's happy to talk about what happened to her in Nashville:

“So you see, Nashville was an accident, a whim and an instinct, like everything else I do. It could just as easily have been Memphis or Atlanta or any place else.”

She's able to discuss the marriage she could barely acknowledge was over when she first arrived in Wales:

“Nobody settles down with someone thinking it’s going to end. We’re all of us in love with the idea of being in love and I don’t ever want to lose that optimism or, if you’d rather, naivety, that belief in the dream. You pay for impulsiveness, though. And the thing that was paramount in my mind was that it got to the point where it was no longer a functional relationship or a decent place for the children."

Reading Alan Jackson's interview puts a fresh perspective on the last year - one of the few writers who's been in a position to place the ITV gameshow in an arc that covers her from Catatonia to Hello. Eating kangaroo bollocks and play-dating a gurning halfwit looks to be less an act of desperation, more a search for personal redemption.

Redemption turns up in strange places, recommended by:

David Samuel, a past adviser to such acts as Blazin’ Squad, So Solid Crew and the permatanned Peter Andre.

"The important thing was that I knew I wouldn’t have to think about anything for as long as I was there – not even about clothes, as all you have is two identical outfits. So no phone, computer or guitar, no pen or paper, no responsibility or control. You’re like characters in a novel, moved around at will. It was exactly what I needed at the time.”

The novel metaphor is one she reaches for again, when trying to explain her appearances as besotted lover in Hello! with the less glittering reality:

“They have their own vocabulary,” she says of the title. “It’s like a modern Mills & Boon, so as long as the people who buy it, myself included, don’t believe they’re reading the gospel truth… It’s not really that important, is it?”

And if some magazines will pay - Jackson suggests Cerys has made up to three quarters of a million quid - for a story nobody believes in, why would you not take it?

It's curious that people - and here, I'm people - who wish Cerys well feel more upset that she was in the tabloids for mucking about on ITV and popping up in Hello talking about kissing an EastEnder than we were when her appearances in the red tops were down to self-destructive addiction. Certainly, taking the Michael Grade shilling (and the shillings which flowed) appears to have given her something approaching stability, mentally and financially. Perhaps the real tragedy in the story is not that she had to IACGMOH, but that there doesn't seem to have been any more fitting outlet for her talents available at the time.

Cerys returns, but not to glory

If Cerys had been hoping that her I'm A Celeb spell would restore her to the nation's hearts, today's papers will make slightly grim reading for her. Admittedly, the attacks are coming from two newspaper groups who she didn't flog her 'my slightly grubby sort-of-romance to' at the weekend.

In the Mirror, Gavin Martin shakes his head more in sorrow than in anger:

"I've met Cerys many times and always found her extremely pleasant, so easy to talk to.

"She's also an exceptionally talented singer but her stint on reality TV is overshadowing all that ability. I don't blame her for doing the show, she's got bills to pay, but you can't help feeling she's better than that."

The Mail, meanwhile, is less with the sorrow, more with the anger, sniffing that the audience is being played:

Celebrity love sham: Cerys and Marc are too busy cashing in to rekindle their romance

She said it hit her like a thunderbolt. He said he hoped they could have children together.

But for a lovestruck pair, Cerys Matthews and Marc Bannerman seem strangely reluctant to rush back into each other's arms.

The singer and actor, who met while competing on I'm a Celebrity...Get me Out of Here! in Australia, have not managed to meet up after emerging from the jungle.

Goodness. Are they suggesting that it might be all made up?

Could someone get Cerys out of there now, please?

We spent the run of I'm A Celebrity looking the other way, to be honest - although we were very taken with Charlie Booker's description of the "relationship" between her and that bloke who used to be in EastEnders as being more like that between a nurse and a child; Brooker, too, described the news that Cerys had gone into the series as being "like when Kirsty McColl died".

This morning, though, Cerys is continuing to work her way along the weary reality TV show path by appearing in her knickers in the News of the World and giving an ooh I'm giddy interview:

"I can't wait to see him again. I'd love to go to him straight away but my children are the priority.

"I'm sure we will be on the phone as often as possible. Right now, we just want to talk and talk.

"I'm looking forward to a big Marc hug but mostly I want to chat to him, go for dinner, go to the cinema, show him the countryside. It's exciting. I can't wait to show him around Wales. He's only ever been to Abergavenny."

It's quite a turn around - last month, Cerys couldn't even bring herself to mention her divorce when being interviewed; now, here she is, in her knickers telling News of the World readers about heroin addiction and breaking up with Seth.

We're just hoping that it's not going to lead to Iceland break bumpers next winter.

Sit down, Britain: Malcolm McLaren has a shock for you

Look, we don't know how to break this to you. What we're about to share will set your world hurtling to the ground, and after reading this, you may find it impossible to resume your life as you've known it to date.

Perhaps you should call friends before reading any further. You shouldn't be on your own.

Malcolm McLaren has discovered that I'm A Celebrity is, you know, a TV game show:

"This is not a reality show. It's fake. They fix things. They know who's going to win and lose...there are about 550 people in the jungle. It might have been a jungle once upon a time, but now it's a film set."

"I had every intention of appearing on the show. But the trials are tricks to fool the
public about a danger that isn't there. It proves this show is nothing more than a circus."
[...]

"The medic, Dr Bob McCarron, told me 'Things are so safe, I would send my own kids in to do the show'.

"There is nothing bad in there. They're hoodwinking the public."

Goodness. ITV don't really send celebrities off to certain death, and have people on hand to make sure there's no real risk? Whoever would have thought, eh?

Coming tomorrow: McLaren reveals the man on the phone in Deal Or No Deal isn't a banker at all - "he's a producer -and it's not even his own money"

McLaren quits before it even starts

Malcolm McClaren's casting as this season's John Lydon for I'm A Celebrity has proved to be something of a success, as he's already got the hump and walked off.

Of course, the bad news for ITV is he's quit before the programme has started transmitting, which isn't, presumably, quite the effect they were hoping for.

Cerys: Looking for my Tarzan

Further to the comments section on the story about I'm Celebrity, Cerys is, definitely, on the programme. She's told the Western Mail why:

“I’m kind of trying to think I’ll be like Jane in the jungle. But I’m looking for Tarzan. My Tarzan.

“I want to have a crazy, confused fun few days or weeks. I’m energetic. I change my mind a lot, I’m definitely indecisive. I love life, I’m happy-go-lucky and curious.

“When you’re old and weary and lying there in bed I don’t think you regret doing things, I think you would regret not doing things."

When you're looking for a Tarzan, with your choices being J from Five, Malcolm McClaren and some sort of chef you might think you're looking in the wrong jungle altogether.

Does Michael Grade know Cerys Matthews' dark secret?

The final line-up for I'm A Celebrity has been more-or-less confirmed, and, yes, Cerys Matthews is onboard.

That makes two bad ITV shows in a year she's done, following her participation in the Challenge Anneka 'charity-ish' album project. Now, the thing about Cerys has always been that she's done surprising things, and often pulled them off - the opinion dividing FHM cover for example, to say nothing of the duets with Tom Jones and Aled Jones. And it would be churlish to only applaud someone's 'sod it, let's try it anyway' approach to life when it results in catsuit photoshoots and surprisingly attractive cover versions.

What does irk, though, is that she's pulled a tour to go off to the "jungle" (where 'jungle' is a TV set in surburban Australia).

Also going in is Malcolm McLaren, the man who invented Johnny Rotten and J from Five. J, clearly, is hoping that he'll be able to pull of the trick of H from Steps and actually get people to realise that he's got a name rather than just a letter; McClaren, we fully expect to be honking on about how the whole thing is beneath him in a matter of hours.

The rest: Anna Ryder-Richardson (who was Wonder Woman to Lawrence Llewellyn Bowen's Superman on Changing Rooms); Rodney Marsh (footballer pundit who enjoys a chuckle at a natural disasters and not a stretch of Kent); John Burton Race (apparently in catering); Gemma Atkinson (who we only know of from men's magazines so we assume she either once kissed Callum Best or was in Hollyoaks, or both) and - somewhat winningly - Janice Dickinson and Lynne Franks, which is like Patsy and Edina but in real life.

John Lydon in character

Today's Daily Telegraph carries an interview with John Lydon, for which he appears to have turned up in character:

Today, he is swathed head to toe in a riot of red tartan - part shell suit, part updated bondage chic. His hair is short, orange and spikey, just like the old days. The teeth aren't looking too off-colour, although there are one or two missing.

The paper gives him an easy ride, even although the very idea of the Telegraph treating Lydon to a puff piece actually negates the whole 'he's still edgy, you know' point of the article; it's on a par with getting an OBE for services to Republicanism.

We're prepared for a nihilistic punk:

Lydon [...] fixes me with a glare which has lost none of its withering force down the years. "How do you prepare for telling the truth?" he asks, ominously.

So what's the righteous target for the 07 model of Johnny Rotten?

The first thing I saw this morning on TV," he cackles, "was a whole lot of your pop bands. McFly, hahaha. Is all that really still going on? It's all dippy and Blue Peter - done with sticky-backed plastic. And you've all rolled over for it. We didn't back then. What's wrong with you lot?"

Apparently, John, there's still a massive market for boys put into bands by controlling svenagllis bouncing through some hit songs with an air of pantomime rebellion. How many nights did you sell out again?

But that's not all he's got. New indie acts get a toothless sucking:

The Pete Doherty brigade get equally short shrift: "They're all got up like Sid Vicious, and poor Sid hadn't got a clue how to dress!"

Yes, Sid Vicious' trademark porkpie hat, nice shirt, cheap suit look. If Lydon cared, he'd have noticed that the Babyshambles look is more mod and ska than punk, but it's not like he's doing anything other than crashing through outrage-by-numbers.

He soon digresses into a lengthy tirade against the Blair/Brown axis, and the new stadium of his beloved Arsenal ("Now I have to sit with accountants and nice boys from Tring!").

Really? And whose shoulders would you expect an estate agent from California to be rubbing with, John?

The attention-grabbing refusal to attend the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction is trumpeted as a victory:

We wrote them a note, a saucy little reminder: don't vote us into your museum, we're very much alive. They're trying to bury us, and make us into a safe commodity. Not possible. Won't work."

An estate agent telling the paper of choice for Home Counties retirees on the eve of his nostalgia tour that he can't be turned into a safe commodity. Fair enough.

Most interestingly of all, though, there's an attempt to force his appearance on I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here, into some sort of anarchist's cv:

Then, three years ago, in a characteristic effort to wrong-foot his detractors, he appeared on the TV reality show, I'm a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!, which he walked out of after 11 days.

"I did it because it was everything wrong. I could have ruined myself. Instead I just was myself, and I won. Anything to win? No! So I left."

It took eleven days of sitting round in the Australian jungle watching soft-porn stars and failed singers eating kangaroo testicles to work out that the programme was a bit of a circus sideshow? Wouldn't just reading the title have given a hint of that?

More to the point, Lydon's suggestion that he walked out on a principle because the show was "wrong" is something of a contradiction to his explanation at the time, which insisted it was because - having narrowly escaped being blown up over Lockerbie, he had the hump when ITV refused to tell him if his wife had shown up.

This isn't, we imagine, the last time Lydon will contradict himself in order to make himself seem more like the mythical anti-establishment figure the tabloids mistook him for in 1977. Let's hope it's the last time intelligent writers collude with him, though.

Shalamar? Really?

They're stretching the definition of Celebrity further than ever before for this year's I'm A C-word: Jeffrey LewisDaniels, out of Shalamar.

An insider said: “Once you see him you’re taken back 20 years. Jeffrey’s full of beans, larger than life.

“He still teaches choreography and will even crank out an old Shalamar number.”

But even twenty years ago Shalamar would have had trouble getting picked out of an identity parade - and are ITV really pinning their hopes on people tuning in on the off-chance of hearing "an old Shalamar number".

Sara Nathan tries to spark some interest in him:

Jeff famously introduced Britain to body-popping — on Top Of The Pops.

Really? Or is that something he's padded his cv with?

"Not many people know, but I invented reality TV"

Turning the programme into something of a pension scheme for PunkCapitalists, Malcolm McLaren looks set to follow Lydon onto I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here.

"... and somehow, I've never quite got round to mentioning it before..."

So, the reason John Lydon walked out of I'm A Celeb was because he knew his wife was flying in to Australia and the production team wouldn't tell him if she'd arrived safely or not.

Because, of course, had she been on a plane which had plummeted into the sea, ITV would have kept him in the dark so as not to spoil the show, wouldn't they?

Oddly, Lydon tries to justify this by explaining that he and his wife had been meant to be on the flight that was blown up over Lockerbie in 1988.

Is it just me being incredibly cynical, I wonder, because I'm surprised that we've never heard this story before in the last fifteen years. Wouldn't you have thought something like that might have turned up in his 1994 autobiography?

Maybe - just maybe - Johnny would have thought that it would have been slightly tacky to turn the deaths of so many people into a showbiz anecdote; but then it's hard to see why he'd then suddenly use them as a comfort blanket to cover his reasons for giving up a gameshow.