The first episode of I’m a Celebrity’s 2019 iteration will air tonight in a highly anticipated season, packed with famous faces including Caitlyn Jenner, Kate Garraway and Nadine Coyle. While the return of the show we know and love promises all our favourite aspects – ah, bickering, inclement climates, heart-warming vulnerability with the power to reboot flagging careers – this season will incorporate one major turn from form. It’s been announced that Bush Tucker trials will no longer include the eating of live insects – and I can’t imagine the celebrity contestants are too unhappy about that particular decision.
How do conventions become set in stone? Who knows why some traditions stand the test of time, and others fall away? For one reason or another, the consumption of squirming creepy crawlies has become an absolute touchstone of ITV’s infamous gameshow. Somehow, for years, we have watched household names consume writhing mealworms for our entertainment – unquestioning, unchallenged. The weird rite of passage is no more.
Wild-life guru Chris Packham talked to BBC Radio 5 live about the producers’ decision to axe insects from the celebrity menu. ‘There was never any ambiguity that eating live invertebrates was abuse and also exploitation for entertainment’, he said, before going on to criticise the show’s historic portrayal of other animals – rats and snakes, frequent components of its celebrity challenges – as ‘bad organisms’
The times, they are a-changin’. And, as they (do not) say, what’s good for invertebrates is good for celebrities. It’s win-win – no bugs get eaten, and no celebrities have to eat bugs. Why didn’t we think of this before?
READ MORE: 2019's I'm A Celebrity Line Up
I'm A Celebrity 2019 line-up
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