The year 2004 can feel very recent and yet entirely another age. Call on Me by Eric Prydz and Cha Cha Slide were two of the biggest-selling singles in the UK charts; less than half of British homes had broadband internet; a plucky young Harvard student named Mark Zuckerberg launched a social network called “The Facebook”.
It was also the big year for reality TV. Rebecca Loos, once the supposed paramour of David Beckham, manually collected the semen from a boar in The Farm and Big Brother producers had to bring in security and cut the live broadcast because “Slick” Vic and Emma started physically fighting. Peter Andre and the glamour model formerly known as Jordan met on I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! while Natasha Kaplinsky was the inaugural winner of Strictly Come Dancing.
Despite every other reality show coming and going, as well as all the profound changes to how we watch TV (and much else besides – we have had seven Prime Ministers since 2004) Strictly and I’m a Celebrity remain the workhorses the BBC and ITV, respectively, depend upon to get eyeballs on their channels.
There have been 442 episodes of I’m a Celebrity before its 24th series begins next Sunday; this week’s Strictly will be the competition’s 498th outing. Both have spawned spin-off programmes so that viewers can watch people talk about the thing they have already watched.
While live viewing figures for both I’m a Celebrity and Strictly have fallen in recent years from a peak of 10+ million each, that can be explained by changing watching habits (the growth of streaming on BBC iPlayer and ITVX) as well as audience interest waning. Both, even Strictly after its annus horribilis, still get in excess of 7 million people watching live, which is huge given the plethora of options competing for viewers’ attention.
So why, having seen so many retired sportsmen learn to waltz or smarmy politicians forced to eat a witchetty grub, do we keep tuning in? Partly, it is the sense of schadenfreude we feel when we see a celebrity who is brilliant at one thing being utterly useless at another. Or the chance to vote for the disgraced former Health Secretary Matt Hancock to be buried alive.
The unveiling of each year’s casts prompts the same debates (it isn’t fair that she learnt to dance as a child; I’ve never even heard of him) and yet we continue to tune in. The opportunity to see famous folk debase themselves on TV is just too irresistible. Who could forget watching Gillian McKeith “faint” on I’m a Celebrity, or Ed Balls’s dance to Gangnam Style?
The ritual humiliations of I’m a Celebrity may turn off viewers were it not helmed by the irrepressible Ant and Dec. At the height of the Partygate revelations emerging in 2021, the pair showed how good a pair of presenters they are with their barbs at Boris Johnson; merely saying “Evening, Prime Minister” just so was enough to draw millions of laughs.
They even managed to make the show work when the pandemic meant that the warmth of the Australian jungle was swapped for a gloomy castle in Wales. The pair have won the TV presenter gong at the National Television Awards (voted for by the public) for the last 23 years running. No wonder ITV signed them up to a three-year, £40 million contract in 2022.
Strictly, for its part, doesn’t do humiliation and tends to go down a more uplifting, inspiring route instead (the obvious exceptions being John Sergeant and Ann Widdecombe). And the show’s producers have kept things feeling relatively fresh after all these years by introducing same-sex pairings, followed by the triumphant successes of Rose Ayling-Ellis, the deaf EastEnders actress who won in 2022, and blind comedian Chris McCausland.
While I’m a Celebrity and Strictly have beaten off all newcomers in the past two decades, there is a serious challenger for the crown of best celebrity reality programme looming on the horizon. Next year should see the first all-star version of The Traitors.
Strictly Come Dancing continues on Saturday at 6.35pm on BBC One; I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! returns on November 17 at 9pm on ITV
