Every November, a group of famous-ish people fly to a jungle, eat things that were alive that morning and sleep under a tarpaulin while the nation votes for them to suffer. Then the nation asks the same question it asks every year: why would anyone do that?
The honest answer has several parts, and every part is money. My notes are in bold. No contestant is named, because every contestant is the same contestant.
1. The fee
Reality shows pay their contestants, sometimes a great deal. The bigger the name, the bigger the fee, and the less likely they are to need it, which is how fees work everywhere.
You would eat a kangaroo’s private parts for a sum of money. You just haven’t been asked. That’s the only difference between you and a former Olympic diver.
2. The relaunch
For a certain kind of celebrity, the one people last saw in 2011, a jungle is a reset button. Three weeks of being visibly “real” on a camera that never turns off can turn a has-been into a national treasure, provided they cry once, at the right time, about their nan.
The format is a car wash for reputations. You go in muddy, you come out shiny, and a voiceover calls it a journey.
3. The edit
Nobody in a reality show is who they are. They are who the edit decides they are. Somebody will be the villain, somebody the sweetheart, and somebody the one who complains about the rice. Contestants know this. They play to it. The edit knows they know.
4. The afterlife
The real money comes after: the magazine shoot, the book, the podcast, the cooking show, the pantomime, the fitness DVD, the Christmas advert. The jungle is not the job. The jungle is the job interview.
Every reality show is the trailer for a pantomime in Wolverhampton. The bug was the audition.
5. And you
You watch. You vote for the worst trial for the one you dislike. You say “I don’t even like this show” for the fourth year in a row, on the sofa, during the show.
They are being paid to suffer. You are suffering for free.