THE surprising thing about this year's I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here is that there are two real, world-renowned celebrities in it. George Takei is one – as Mr Sulu from the original series of Star Trek he has been familiar to millions for over 40 years – and Martina Navratilova is the other.
The rest come from the usual British tabloid menu. One, for example, is celebrated because she has large breasts, another because she is engaged to someone who plays football. Several have presented TV programmes. All want to be more famous than th
ey are.
But Takei and Navratilova are as famous as they could desire, so what are they doing on the show? As someone who claims to have been named after King George VI, Takei could be a lifelong Anglophile, but it seems more likely he's just in the jungle for a laugh and perhaps whatever money comes his way.
And Martina? Well, she may have all the recognition that she wants, but she never seems to tire of searching for more affection.
She wants to be loved, but people are resistant to her charms. At Wimbledon, for example, the crowd never really warmed to her, despite her being one of the best tennis players of all time.
They respected her, perhaps even admired her, but could go no further. Her brashness and all too evident egomania got in the way.
For a time, it looked like the same fate might befall her in the jungle. As the ten original contestants met in a hotel room before being separated into two teams known as Home Camp and Away Camp, she was not content to introduce herself and let others remember her achievements for themselves. Instead, "I ended up being pretty much the greatest player that ever lived," she said, in a remark which possibly prompted Steffi Graf, John McEnroe, Pete Sampras, Billie Jean King and a few more to phone up their lawyers and ask if it was actionable.
It was left to Joe Swash, once of EastEnders, to lighten the mood with a spot of unintentional humour when Martina told him her country of origin. "The Czech Republic?" he asked. "Is that near Prague?"
Joe and Martina were both lucky enough to be in Home Camp, which was preferable to Away Camp for two reasons. One: it had better facilities. Two: it did not have Robert Kilroy-Silk.
Not that anyone in either camp was exactly going through severe deprivation. All right, the food is not the best, but with Takei being 71 and Esther Rantzen 68, this is clearly not special-forces training they are undergoing.
Nonetheless, Martina decided she had to let everyone know how brave she was being to take part. "I'm a control freak, so I'm really putting myself out there," she said.
Monday night found the control freak facing up to the first challenge to her ego – a battle with Carly Zucker in what was called the Celebrity Chest Challenge. This entailed running through a swamp, collecting 'Spawn Balls' and throwing them into a hole. Basketball, by any other name: a simple matter of hand-eye co-ordination which Martina reckoned she would be quite good at.
"Being one of the greatest athletes of all time, I figure OK, she's got 25 years on me but I've got more experience," she declared before battle commenced. She was right. She won.
"It's about ego, of course, but it's also about getting a treat for the team," she said later. True enough, she seemed to blend in well, though we can expect the tension to grow now the two teams have been merged, and joined by Timmy Mallett and David Van Day.
Anyway, given that Martina did not chat too much about her glorious career, the most relevant sporting chat of the first week probably came on Tuesday night, when we were told of the "little-known fact" that Ryan Giggs once went out with one person in Home Camp.
"And I'll give you a clue, it wasn't George Takei," said Dec. "No, he's more of a Paul Scholes man," replied Ant.
It was of course the former Word presenter Dani Behr, who recalled the time she turned up at a Manchester United match and some of the crowd began to chant: "He's here, he's there, he's shagging Dani Behr". She was mortified, as her mum was with her.
